


Episode 15 AKA Mind Control

by JinxQuickfoot



Series: Whumptoberverse [15]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Attempted Kidnapping, BAMF Clint Barton, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Clint Barton, Bucky Barnes & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Day 15, Deaf Clint Barton, Gen, Hostage Situations, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt Sam Wilson, Hurt Scott Lang, Hurt Tony Stark, M/M, Mind Control, Not Canon Compliant, Peter Parker Whump, Polyamory, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Clint Barton, Tony Stark Feels, Whumptober 2020, winterhawk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27540898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JinxQuickfoot/pseuds/JinxQuickfoot
Summary: “F.R.I.D.A.Y.,” Peter said quickly, not wanting to lose his chance. “Call Bruce and tell him -”“None of that,” the purple man snapped, and Peter’s jaw locked shut again. “Say another word I don’t tell you to and I’ll make you swallow your tongue.”----------------------------------------------------------------------------A mysterious man with the power of mind control visits the Compound. No one has a good time.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & James "Bucky" Barnes, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes & Clint Barton, James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Series: Whumptoberverse [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921831
Comments: 342
Kudos: 303
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Teeelsie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teeelsie/gifts).



> Whumptober 2020 Day 15
> 
> Prompts: Science Gone Wrong/Possession
> 
> Relationship: Clint & Bucky
> 
> For Teeelsie, who made a usually non-shipping fan ship Winterhawk
> 
> Can be read as a stand-alone but exists in the same timeline as the rest of the Whumptoberverse.
> 
> TW: This fic has a few nasty moments of violence/gore, but nothing worse than you’d see in Jessica Jones

Peter was sure of three things.

Firstly, being at the Compound was weird. He hated that that was the truth, but he couldn’t deny it. Tony had been perfectly clear. The Compound was open to Spider-man. Not Peter Parker. All the non-Avengers staff that worked there were under strict NDAs, but even they didn’t know Peter’s identity. If anyone asked, he was an intern to Helen Cho. He’d never even met the Avengers, and he certainly didn’t know Tony.

He was beginning to wonder if that last one was true. 

Secondly, he had made the right decision regarding Ned. It had been hard, and it had hurt, but it was the best path in the long run if it kept Ned out of harm’s way. That was the only thing that mattered.

And thirdly, he was late.

Peter was on the phone, half-running to the Compound doors. He often ran late these days, Happy being too well associated with Tony to be his regular driver anymore, so May dropped him off when she could. Which worked well, considering that Happy would always pick Peter up from school, and of late Peter was barely there.

So May would drop him up the road, so that no one would see her, and then Peter would walk (or more, often, run) the rest of the way to try and make it on time.

“I just got to the doors,” Peter was gasping into the phone.

_“Peter -”_

“I’m so sorry, Dr Banner, May’s shift ran long and -”

_“Peter, breathe. It’s fine, just -”_

“- and I’ll be up in five minutes and -” Peter was speaking so fast that he didn’t even notice the man in the purple suit until he had barrelled right into him, sending him flying backward. “Shit! I mean, sorry.”

The man looked up at him with such indignation and rage that Peter half-hesitated in offering him a hand up, but forced himself to do it anyway. “I’m so sorry, sir, I didn’t see you.”

The purple man’s eyes narrowed as he took the hand, eyeing the phone still clenched in Peter’s fist. “Who were you talking to?”

“Oh, no one. Are you ok? You’re not hurt? I honestly didn’t see you.”

The purple man ignored the questions. “I heard you say Dr Banner. Tell me who you were talking to. And don’t lie.”

_No one. You misheard me. I don’t know the Avengers. Doctor Who?_ Peter’s brain provided a million answers in the time he felt marionette strings pierce into his tongue and make him say, “I was talking to Dr Banner.” He clapped a hand over his mouth the moment the words were out, eyes flying wide. _What the hell?_

_“Peter?”_ Bruce’s voice echoed over the phone, the call not yet cut off. _“Are you with someone?”_

“Tell him you’ll be right up.”

The marionette strings sliced in deeper. “I’ll be right up, Dr Banner.”

_“How many times - Peter, it’s Bruce, ok? See you soon. I’ll make you some Ashwagandha.”_

“Hang up.”

Peter hung up the phone, the motion completely involuntary. Was this guy _controlling_ him?Could he control other people? Was he going to control Bruce? He made a dash for the doors, meaning to shout a warning to anyone inside, but the purple man cut him off with a “Stop, now.”

Peter froze. He tried to move his arms, his legs, but no dice, and that was far too close to being trapped under Tony’s workshop for comfort.

“Good.” The purple man peered in through the glass doors, checking no one was watching them. “So, it’s _Bruce,_ is it? You close with the green monster then, kid? Tell me.”

The order not to lie was still fresh, and Peter found himself saying, “Yes. Kind of. I work with him sometimes.”

“My my, and there was me thinking this was going to be difficult. And what’s a teenager got to offer one of the top scientists in the county? Actually, never mind, I don’t care. More important things to do. Off we pop then.”

It was not technically an order, so Peter was still unable to move.

The purple man leaned in so the next words were shouted right in Peter’s overly-sensitive ears. “Take me to Banner. _Now. ”_

The new command seemed to override the immobilization one, because Peter found himself able to move again. He was pushing open the doors before he knew what he was doing, leading the purple man inside one of the most secure buildings in the state.

He tried to fight back with every step through the Compound lobby, but the puppet strings had moved from his tongue to his limbs and there was nothing he could do to tear them out. They were approached by no less than four security guards, who the purple man sent away with a few words and the impatient wave of a hand as Peter led them towards the elevators. Peter tried to talk to one of them but the purple man snapped his fingers in his face and ordered him to shut up. His mouth sealed shut, as out of his control as the rest of him.

According to Tony, the Compound had been almost empty when they first moved in - just Avengers and essential staff - but the Accords Committee had insisted on sending in a workforce of their own. The Avengers’ private floors could still only be accessed by them, but the main parts of the building and the med bay were trawled by security with thick ID badges and unfriendly glares.

One of them was waiting by the lift, the purple man dismissing her with a “Go home” even as Peter swiped his thumbprint to open the elevator doors. Peter swallowed as the guard walked out the main doors. He recognized her. Her name was Gladys. They had bonded over their shared home in Queens.

And she had walked out the main doors instead of heading to the garage. She was going to _walk_ to Queens? But there was traffic, and no footpath down that road, and -  
  
The elevator doors slid shut, and the purple man looked to Peter impatiently. “Are you deaf? Dr Banner. Now.”

Peter gestured hopelessly to his throat, then the ceiling. The purple man caught on. “Fine.” He rolled his eyes. “You can speak. And stop slowing us down, this is more important than a stupid kid could comprehend.”

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.,” Peter said quickly, not wanting to lose his chance. “Call Bruce and tell him -”

“None of that,” the purple man snapped, and Peter’s jaw locked shut again. “Say another word I don’t tell you to and I’ll make you swallow your tongue.”

It was clear that he meant it. Peter took a long breath in through his nose. He would be ok. He would think of a way out of this. He _had_ to think of a way out of this.

_“Mr Parker,”_ F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice echoed around the elevator and Peter got a half-moment of satisfaction at seeing the purple man jump. _“I have registered a threat issued to you by an unknown person. Contacting all available Avengers now.”_

“Tell her to not to!” the purple man snapped.

Unbidden, Peter found himself saying, “I’m fine, F.R.I.D.A.Y. Don’t call anyone.”

_“I need the code, Peter.”_

_Peter._ F.R.I.D.A.Y’s way of calling bullshit. One code, and every Avenger currently in the Compound would be here in minutes. Peter would have backup.

Unless the purple man could control them too. If he asked for help, was he leading the rest of the team into a trap?

Peter was spared from making that choice when the purple man said, “Who the hell is that? Tell me.”

“That’s F.R.I.D.A.Y. She’s, um, Mr Stark’s A.I. She runs the building.”

“Turn her off. Now.”

Peter felt the marionette strings pull as him, even as he fought back. He wanted to say he didn’t know how, that it was impossible. It should have been impossible.

But it wasn’t. Because Tony was Tony and he had built a contingency for everything, including if F.R.I.D.A.Y. was compromised and needed to be shut down. Hardly anyone knew that contingency code. Rhodey knew it. Tony knew it. And Tony had told Peter about it. Because there was a time when he had trusted him with something that important.

Like he has trusted Peter with access to his computer server, thinking he would only ever use it for Spider-Man schematics.

Peter felt tears brim as he said, “Code Black Hole, F.R.I.D.A.Y.” Then, “I’m sorry.”

If an A.I. could hesitate, F.R.I.D.A.Y. did. _“Are you sure?”_

He knew what he was supposed to say. The dummy code, in case he was ever asked this under duress. He tried to say it. Instead what came out was, “I’m sure. Just take me to Bruce’s floor before you turn off.”

Peter was sure he heard a note of sadness in F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice as she said, _“Very well, Mr Parker. Wake me up when you need me.”_

Then the elevator was moving and Peter was left alone with the purple man.

“Stop crying, it’s disgusting.”

Immediately, the tears that had been about to spill over stopped, although the desperate idea that he had just betrayed Tony in the worse way possible only increased tenfold. The purple man drummed his hands over the handrail as the elevator soared skywards, impatient. Almost…nervous.

The elevator ride was short, but Peter used the time to take in as much information about his captor as he could. Peter would guess that he was somewhere in his early 40s, British accent, and while the suit looked like it might have been expensive once, it was worn now. There were flecks of dirt under the man’s fingernails, a shade too much oil in his hair, as if he had been a while since he’d washed it. On the run, perhaps? From what? What would a man who could control people need to run from?

That was as far as Peter’s speculations got before the elevator doors were rumbling open and they were met with the barrels of two stun guns. “You are not authorized to -”

“Shoot each other.”

Neither guard hesitated before turning their weapons on the other. The purple man didn’t even bother to step over them fully, his dull dress shoe crushing the smaller guard’s pinky finger. Peter flinched at the whimper of pain, wanting to kneel and help, but the purple man grabbed him by the collar and shoved him forward with a, “Banner. Go.”

Peter paused by the door to the labs, realizing the new roadblock in front of them. “It needs an ID.”

“So? You’re on first-name terms with the Avengers, use yours.”

“I don’t…I don’t have one.”

_“Don’t lie!”_ The yelled words made Peter flinch, eyes prickling with tears that weren’t allowed to form, with quips and comebacks he wasn't allowed to say. He couldn’t _stand_ this.

Peter swallowed, trying to stay calm. “F.R.I.D.A.Y. usually just opens the door for me. And now she’s turned off so -”

“There has to be a backup. Tell me.”

Peter tried to shove his lips together, to not say the words, but it was no use. “The security guards. Retinal scan.”

The purple man huffed, glaring at the security pad like it had personally offended him. “Grab it and bring it here then.”

Peter had more than a few words to say about referring to a human being as an ‘it’ but he had no choice but to walk back over to the elevator to grab one of the guards, electing to drag the one with all his fingers unbroken.

“Not that!” the purple man snapped as Peter started to drag the guard towards the scanner, making it slow so as not to give away his strength. “That will take far too long; just bring me the eye.”

No. No no no. Not that. _Not that._ He wasn’t doing _that._

But Peter’s hand was already moving, dropping the guard back to the floor as the man’s terrified face watched Peter’s fingers descend. The guard was still trembling from the force of the stun gun, lips moving but not able to form words. Peter didn’t need the words. He could tell the man was begging him to stop.

But he couldn’t. He sunk his fingers into the man’s eye socket and pulled.

“There, that wasn’t so hard was it?” The purple man gestured to the retinal scanner and Peter pulled back, sensitive hearing picking up every nuance of the mutilated man’s whimpers behind him, but the purple man caught his wrist and shoved it up until the scan was complete. 

_“Code,”_ Bruce’s voice crackled over the comm. It was a two-part security system; the guards had access to the labs and common areas, but only if an Avenger on the other side gave them access. It was a compromise between Accords Committee and Avengers that no one had been happy with.

The purple man turned on him, furious. “I told you to get me in the door, kid. No more delays - do it, even if you have to smash your head against this door until you break it with your thick skull.”

Peter swallowed, knowing what he had to say, willing himself not to say it. He couldn’t let this crazy man near Bruce. He _couldn’t._ What if he controlled him, or hurt him, or wanted to control the Hulk to hurt someone else? He couldn’t let that happen.

“Bruce?” he whispered into the comm, a low moan coming from the guard still bleeding on the floor.

“Peter? Why are you using the security system?”

He was Spider-Man. He was strong. He could fight this.

“I need you to open the door.”

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

He couldn’t fight this. “Yes. I’m hurt.”

Bruce didn’t even question it. There was a buzz and the door swung open. The purple man instantly lost interest in Peter, sending him away with the final instruction “Go find a cupboard and stay there forever” before making his way to Bruce’s lab.

It didn’t take long for Peter to find one. He crouched among the mops and brooms, arms wrapped around his knees, unable to cry as a spider crawled up his back as he huddled in the dark alone.


	2. Chapter 2

Bucky missed Wakanda.

He knew that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t his home. The people there had risked a lot to shelter him, and he shouldn’t be wishing to place that burden back on their shoulders. He also knew that Steve had jumped through all sorts of hoops to get him something that remotely resembled freedom now he was back in the States. If being all but confined to the same set of five rooms with constant monitoring could be called ‘resembling freedom.’

But he missed it all the same. He missed the beauty. He missed the scents of fresh air and citrus. He missed having the comfort of Shuri’s workshop, he missed _Shuri_. He missed his hut; the first place he had felt was something close to his in seventy years.

He missed his goddamn goats.

Whenever that train of thought started, he tried to find the positives. He was getting help. Accords Committee-approved, clinical, detached help, but still help. Hydra was gone. And (and he always had to remind himself of this one) he got to be close to Steve again. Which he was sure would definitely be a positive, one day.

He hated the fact that it wasn’t. That every time he heard Steve’s footsteps approach his quarters he felt anxious, not relieved. That so often he told F.R.I.D.A.Y. to tell Steve that he was asleep, he was resting, he was recovering. And that Steve respected his wishes every time.

And that Bucky had no idea how to fix the rift that sprung up between them.

He was so deep in thought that he didn’t see the punch coming until it was too late, knuckles catching him across the jaw and sending him reeling. Usually, he would have been able to shake it off, get back in the game and come back swinging, but the pain that had been blossoming in his left side flared and he hit the training mat with a grunt.

His opponent showed no mercy, pulling a Black Widow and gripping Bucky’s throat with his thighs, leaving his hands free to fully pin Bucky to the mat. Bucky could have gotten out of it, but his side flared again in a way that told him that moving that way not a good idea, so he tapped out.

“Seriously?”

Bucky tapped the mat again, more insistently, and the archer's grip released him, rolling back to his feet and tossing Bucky a towel.

Clint raised an eyebrow at him as he snatched up a water bottle. “You’re not letting me win, are you? Because if I find out that’s the case I’m going to beat your ass into next Wednesday, Barnes.”

Bucky got back to his feet, toweling himself off, ignoring that that aggravated the pain. So, there might be one genuine positive about leaving Wakanda.

Bucky liked Clint. A lot. Not that he was sure he had had a choice. At first, Bucky had thought that the Accords Committee had assigned the archer to be his watchdog while he was on American soil, he hung around him so often. When Bucky had finally asked how long he had been assigned that job, Clint had given him a look filled with so much indignation that Bucky had almost laughed. Almost.

“Like I would let those suits assign me anything. My orders come from Hill and Cap and no one else, thank you very much.”

“Then why -”

“Brainwashed Russian assassins,” Clint had supplied. “And former players for the other team. Kind of my specialty. They usually have red hair, but for you I'll make an exception.”

Reason one for liking Clint Barton; he didn’t tiptoe around him. He never brought up Bucky’s past unnecessarily, but he didn’t treat it like he was walking through minefield either. He managed to normalize it without trivializing it. He didn’t check in with him every five minutes. He didn’t treat him like a bomb that was counting down to explode.

Bucky raised an eyebrow at him. “Nice to know that the only way you think I’d tap out is to let you win.”

Clint shot him a crooked grin as he tipped back his water bottle, first drinking from it then tipping the rest over his head. “I was always strongest from a distance.”

“What, and I’m not?”

“Hm.” Clint looked for his towel and, not seeing it, wrenched the one Bucky was holding out his hands, their knuckles brushing. “There’s a question to be answered.”

Reason two for liking Clint Barton; he wasn’t afraid to touch him. No one touched him - which he was fine with. Mostly. Even Natasha, his other regular contact at the Compound, kept her distance, but he knew that was more because of her own past than his own. Then she’d been relegated to bedrest since the fire. Bucky knew he made most of the medical staff nervous,and that Stark and Steve had both been visiting her often, so he’d been steering clear of that area since Clint had recovered from the alien attack.

Clint was another story. Not only did he spar with Bucky for real, not withholding back any dirty tricks (of which he seemed to have an infinite number), but afterward he’d clap him on his shoulder, or give him a hand up from the matt, or prod him relentlessly if they were having a conversation and he thought Bucky was zoning out.

Touch was new. Hydra’s treatment of him had always been clinical and detached, with as little person-to-person contact as possible. He’d readapted to it a little in Wakanda, when it had been necessary for Shuri to examine him, but since returning to the Compound, it had been limited to mostly Clint. And he knew that Steve would touch him, if he asked, but he also couldn’t bear it if Steve did and treated him like fragile glass.

It was something he knew he had to work on, because only having contact with Clint was leading to certain _feelings_ that he wasn’t ready for with anyone, and that he certainly shouldn’t be having for someone who was already taken.

He was sure it was just the exclusive touch and the limited choice of company. He was projecting.

Bucky leaned against the ropes, trying to ignore the tingling the brief contact had left over his knuckles. “You mean who’s the better shot?”  
  
“I mean, the answer is me, obviously. But if you got that arm sorted, hand-to-hand you’d get me every time.”

Reason three for liking Clint Barton; he knew when to push, even if it drove Bucky up the wall sometimes.

He knew he needed time. And space. And that recovery was slow. But, on his better days, even he could admit that he needed a kick up the ass sometimes, and Clint was more than happy to provide. He was sure Clint had done this with Natasha, and later with Wanda, and was well practiced on spotting the differences between a trigger and when one of his charges needed a shove.

Mentioning the arm fell somewhere in between those two categories.

“Not yet.”

“When?” Clint demanded. “You need to train with it if you’re going to join us in the field.”

Bucky snorted, hiding the wince when the movement caused a shot of pain down his side. He just needed to hold it together until he got back to his room, where he had a half-bottle of Steve’s pain meds tucked away. They never gave him a full bottle, despite the fact that he told his plain, white-wall therapist every session that no, he wasn’t suicidal, and could she please stop asking?

She asked anyway. She said she needed to fill out her forms. Bucky wondered just how much paperwork there was on him now, stacked in boxes or overflowing some Committee member’s in-tray.

“They’re not going to let me join you in the field,” Bucky said, his voice low. “They’re barely comfortable with me living here.”

“And by they, you mean the Committee right?”

“Sure, let’s go with that.”

Of all the current Avengers, Bucky could name three that might possibly want him having their backs. Stark was an obvious no. Bucky didn’t known Colonel Rhodes or Scott Lang very well, but he doubted the men who had been paralyzed and locked away in the Raft respectively would want him on their team any time soon.

Which left Sam Wilson.

Sam had really tried when Bucky had first moved to the Compound. Bucky appreciated that, but they had both been relieved when Clint had stepped up to guide the former assassin through the transition, letting Sam step away. 

“That’s their problem.” Clint ditched the water bottle and towel, moving into the center of the ring for another bout. Shit. There was no way he’d be able to go around round without giving away the injury, and that would mean fuss and med bay and…no. Bucky scrambled for an excuse as Clint added, “And you will join us in the field, so you better be ready for when you do.”

“Didn’t take you for an optimist.”

“Pragmatist,” Clint corrected. “You’re a weapon. The Accords Committee isn’t so thrilled about having you in their superhero zoo at the moment because they still see you as a _Russian_ weapon, and that’s getting their government-sanctioned tighty whities in a twist. But prove to them your real colors are red, white and blue, and they won’t hesitate to point in you whatever direction their next ‘threat’ lies.”

Bucky dropped his gaze. “Great. Can’t wait.”

“Hey.” Clint closed the gap between them, tilting Bucky’s chin up so they were eye level. “I’m telling you how they think. Not how any of us think, and certainly not the truth. You’re no one’s weapon. You’re Bucky Barnes.”

They were…very close. And later Bucky would use that as the excuse to why he didn’t see Clint’s jab coming as the archer’s fist landed squarely in his injured side.

He bent over, spitting. “Christ, Barton, what the hell?”

“I knew it.” Clint smirked at him triumphantly as he went to lift up Bucky’s shirt to take a better look, even as Bucky batted him away. “Where are you hurt and why are you hiding it?”

“You couldn’t have just asked?”

“Would you have told me? You’ve been hiding it since you came in the gym.”

Damn. Either Bucky was rusty or Clint was just that good. “I’m fine. I heal fast.” 

“Which means you can heal _wrong._ ”

Bucky knew that one all too well. He still woke up from nightmares of the mission he’d returned from with a leg he hadn’t been able to set himself. The Hydra doctors had had to rebreak it in several places so it could heal properly.

They hadn’t bothered with anesthetic. Machines didn’t need medicine.

“I’m healing correctly. And I have pain meds, so back off.”

Clint, decidedly, did _not_ back off. “What pain meds? From Wakanda?”

Bucky frowned. Why would he need meds from Wakanda? “I just use Steve’s.”

“And are they working?” Clint didn’t give him the space to lie. “Look, I can’t pretend that all of that stuff doesn’t go right over my head, but even I can get that while you and Steve might both be super-soldiers, your serums are different. What works on him isn’t going to necessarily work on you.” He considered for a moment then said, “We’re fixing that.”

Bucky sighed. He knew it. “Right now, all I’m going to do is take a shower.”

“You’d better. I’m not taking you to Bruce smelling like gym.”

Bucky went very still. “Bruce Banner?”

“Yep.” Clint stayed casual as he hopped out of the ring. “You haven’t met yet?”

Bucky shook his head. Banner’s quarters were beyond his small section of the Compound, and he’d never run into him in med bay. “I’m really fine with Steve’s meds. It’s just something that happened when I was training, and it’s healing. I’m fine.”

“Until you’re not.” Clint leaned against the ropes, making it clear he wasn’t dropping the matter. “And before you answer, you weren’t there when we had to pull a length of barbed wire longer than me out of Steve. He’d passed out before he could remove it himself, so his body healed over it. And that was before Tony and Bruce figured out an anesthetic that the serum didn’t burn through in seconds.”

Ok, nope, Bucky was definitely out. Banner was one thing. But he was _not_ going to Stark for help, no way. Living in the man’s house, eating the food and meds and therapy he paid for was already almost more than he could stand.

Not that he had had much of a choice.

Clint seemed to read his mind before he quickly added, “But I’m sure Bruce can figure this one out on his own. And you’ll like him, I promise.”

“He and Stark are friends though, right?”

Clint seemed to hesitate before he settled on, “Sure. Usually.”

“So what if he’s up there? Part of this deal was that I stay out of his way.” It wasn’t that Bucky wasn’t sick of his tiny area of the Compound, because he was. But he’d made a deal, and he intended to keep it. The man deserved to walk around his own house without fear of running into the man who had killed…well, without fear of running into Bucky.

Clint took it in stride. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.? Is Stark with Banner right now?”

There was a silence as answer.

Clint frowned. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.? You sleeping?”

Another long pause. Then - 

_“Mr Stark is indisposed.”_  


“Huh.” Clint still looked confused.

“What?”

“Just, F.R.I.D.A.Y. usually calls Tony ‘Boss’, because of course he programmed her to call him that. Although slightly better than J.A.R.V.I.S. calling him _sir_.” Clint rolled his eyes. “Maybe he updated her.”  


_“I have undergone some recent reprogramming, Mr Barton.”_

Clint wrinkled his nose. “Gross, you made me sound old. What happened to Agent?”

_“I have undergone some recent reprogramming.”_

“Whatever. I’m sure Stark will work out the bugs. Speaking of - could we go up to Bruce’s lab and not run him right now?”  


_“Mr Stark is indisposed.”_

“And you’ll tell us if that changes?”

_“Mr Stark is indisposed.”_

“Close enough.” He raised an eyebrow at Bucky. “There, no Stark. Just a doctor that’s going to help you with that pain. Hey.” He reached out to clasp Bucky’s arm. “I get it. Having a scientist perform tests on you, not a great scenario. And I’m not forcing you to go _._ But Steve’s meds will work until they don’t, and I for one am not up for seeing you in unnecessary pain because you didn’t see Bruce and get your own medication fixed. And I can stay with you throughout, if you want.”

Bucky took his arm back. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Good, because I don’t babysit and you’re not a child. So make the damn adult decision.”

Bucky fought the urge to glower at him because the sneaky bastard had boxed him right into a corner and he wasn’t going to do anything even remotely childish to prove him right. Which left only one option.

“Fine. We’ll go see Bruce Banner.”

***

Bucky Barnes was not what Clint was expecting.

They’d met briefly at the airport in Germany, and Clint hadn’t exactly had long to process that Cap’s long-thought dead army buddy was somehow alive and being chased by international governments, before Ross’s men had nabbed them and thrown his sorry ass in prison.

There hadn’t been a lot to do on the Raft. Wanda had shut down the second they locked that collar around her neck, and there were only so many times he and Sam could try and calm a nervous Scott Lang, or Clint could punch the walls of his cell in frustration. But when he was done internally panicking about his kids or externally cussing out Tony or trying to work through Natasha’s logic for signing the damn Accords in the first place, he had started to find thoughts of a certain brunet super-soldier crossing his mind.

Clint knew a lot about the WWII sniper. One didn’t have Phil Coulson as a handler for as long as he had without coming to know every trivial detail about Captain America and the Howling Commandoes. As Clint had never expected to cross paths with any of them, they had become comforting bedtime stories for when he was stuck on a boring mission with only Phil in his ear to entertain him. And while he had never expected to meet Captain America period, he certainly hadn’t expected to meet him after coming out of a bathroom post-brainwashing by an alien god to tell him he could fly a jet.

He supposed it fit that he had met Bucky Barnes in an equally strange and unlikely scenario. Then again, Clint’s life was nothing but strange and unlikely scenarios.

Upon hearing that Bucky was returning to the States to live at the Compound, Clint had stepped up as his unofficial handler without prompting. The similarities to Natasha’s and Wanda’s situations were enough that he thought he had at least some help to offer. Besides, he was curious to get to know the Howling Commando he heard talked about so reverently from his own handler who had taken a chance on Clint all those years ago.

The first thing Clint had learned about Bucky Barnes was that he was not the man from those stories.

Clint hadn’t expected him to be. They were stories for a reason, and he had fought enough battles to know that the reality was always more chaotic and bloody and horrible than the family-packaged narratives sent home to comfort the masses. On top of that, he was hardly expecting the suave, charming, ladies’ man Coulson had told him about after seventy years in a fascist organization’s clutches.

The second thing Clint learned about Bucky Barnes was that Clint liked him more than he should.

Even putting everything with Hydra aside, Clint doubted that Bucky, whose only non-Winter Soldier memories were from before the 1940s, was ready for _that_ conversation. Not that that conversation would be happening. Clint had had (and had acted out) his fair share of bad ideas, but even he could see that this was one he shouldn’t even let in the door, let alone entertain.

He caught himself entertaining it anyway.

He had waited for it to go away, but as they had spent more and more time together, beyond Clint just offering his services as the resident former-assassin whisperer, the nagging feelings only grew stronger.

Didn’t mean he was going to act on them.

The third thing Clint learned about Bucky Barnes was that he could be a stubborn ass when he wanted to be.

“I see where Steve gets it from,” Clint had commented at one point, earning him that Winter Soldier glower that he hadn’t hesitated to remark upon as ‘endearing’. “Or do you get it from Steve?”

Clint respected that Bucky had limits. If anyone was entitled to them, he was. Natasha had had them when he had first brought her into S.H.I.E.LD. He had tolerated them for a while, until enough was enough. He had told her in no uncertain terms that she couldn’t hole up in her S.H.I.E.L.D. quarters forever, that if they wanted this to work she had to not only take on S.H.I.E.L.D. missions but do so with no questions and a “Yes, sir”, and that included attending every debriefing and mandated therapy appointment that the agency had decided was in her best interests.

He still had the scar on his left ear where she had thrown the knife his way, but it had worked. He’d made her get her shit together, and with Coulson’s guidance the trio had become S.H.I.E.L.D.’s top asset. And he was determined to get Bucky to the same place.

Bucky had been quiet as Clint had ushered him out of the gym shower and towards Bruce’s lab. He didn’t need F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s guidance to know he would be there. He hadn’t seen him around in a couple of days, but that wasn’t unusual. Bruce’s nonconsensual eighteen months in space had made him slowly seek out more and more of his own company, not to mention that he trusted anyone related to the Accords even less than Clint did, Ross attached or not.

“You’ll like him,” Clint repeated as they rounded the corner onto Bruce’s floor. “For someone who can turn into a giant green rage monster on a whim, he’s the least combative person I’ve ever met. All he wants to do is help people, and he’ll help you, I promise.”

Bucky gave a noncommittal grunt behind him. Clint had sent a brisk pace, knowing it was going to aggravate whatever injury Bucky was hiding. He would bet his bow that it was not from a training accident, as he had claimed, but pushing that wasn’t going to do anything to convince Bucky to seek out help for it.

“Seriously, teddy bear in a lab coat. Except when you get him talking about _Love Island_ , then he goes -”

_“Clint!”_

A hand grabbed his arm and yanked him backward. Clint grabbed it on instinct, twisting Bucky’s wrist back and down, immobilizing the arm before he remembered who he was with. He let go. “Don’t do that.”

Bucky ignored the warning. “Do you smell that?”

Clint sniffed the air. “Nothing but air conditioning and sweet sweet cleaning chemicals.” He noted that they were standing outside a janitor’s cupboard, one of the many scattered throughout the Compound. “Why? What do you smell?”

Bucky wrinkled his nose. “Smells like piss. And…blood. Not as strong, but it’s there.”

“In the cupboard?”

“Hm.” Bucky leaned his ear to the door. “I hear a heartbeat.”

Clint was already pulling the door open, expecting to find one of the Compound’s custodians passed out inside, perhaps from a seizure or maybe a stroke. He did not expect to see a hunched over, trembling teenager, staring up at him with huge eyes.

“Peter?”

Clint was in the cupboard in an instant, fighting the urge not to screw up his face at the smell and embarrass the kid further. He started running his hands over him, starting with the head, looking for injuries and growing more confused when he found none. Peter was staring at his knees, face pink with shame, barely acknowledging Bucky hovering in the doorway.

“That’s Stark’s kid, isn’t it?”

Clint gave a non-committal noise, still focussed on Peter. “Why are you in here?”

Peter just shook his head.

“Are you hurt? Bucky said he smelled blood. Hey.” Clint gently cupped Peter under the chin, bringing his head up. “The only thing that matters right now is that you’re ok. No one is focusing on anything else.”

Peter shook his head at that, trying to tug himself out of Clint’s grip, but Clint clung on. “No dice. If you’re hurt, you tell me.”

Another head shake.

“Then why aren’t you talking?”

Peter slammed his head into the back of the cupboard. “Ok,” Clint decided. “I’m taking you to Cho and calling Tony.”

He took Peter’s arm, intending to guide him out of the tiny space, only to to reel back as the teenager lashed out at him. “I need to stay in the cupboard.”

Well, at least he was talking. Clint shot a look at Bucky, who was still in the doorway, looking unsure. “Ok. Why do you need to stay in the cupboard?”

He reached for Peter again, but the kid dodged him, and Clint caught sight of his hand before he could wrap it back around his knees. “Is your hand hurt? Peter! Is your hand bleeding?”

The kid didn’t answer, just growing more agitated and repeating, “I need to stay in the cupboard! I need to stay in the cupboard forever!”

Clint had seen mental breaks before, more times than he cared to count, but he couldn’t fathom the reason it was happening to the puppy of a teenager he had seen trailing Tony around the Compound. Well, until the kidnapping incident. But that had been weeks ago, and wouldn’t have been enough to cause this. Right?

The agent voice clearly wasn’t working, so Clint let the dad voice come out to play instead. “Well, you can’t,” Clint decided. “You’re coming to Cho.”Then, softer, “Whatever happened, we’re going to make it better.” He went to take Peter’s arm again. This time the teenager tensed, letting Clint hold him. “Out the cupboard now, ok?”

It happened so fast that Clint barely had time to brace himself. One moment he was guiding Peter to the door, the next he was slamming into something solid, seeing sparks, and a warm arm was guiding him to his feet, saying his name in his ear.

Clint blinked away the blur, letting Bucky help him to his knees. Peter was back in his corner, eyes down, shaking again. The next words were muffled as they were said into his knees, but Clint got the gist. _I can’t leave the cupboard._

He looked so miserable that Clint made to move towards him again, only to have Bucky grab him and hold him back. “Don’t. He’ll hurt you.”

Clint opened his mouth to retort that Peter wouldn’t hurt anyone, ever, to the point where he had pulled his first arch-nemesis out of a damn fire, but then he felt the throbbing in the back of his head. He looked from Peter to Bucky, calculating.

“I’m not grabbing him,” Bucky stated.

“Yeah, I think he’d have you beat anyway, with you being injured and all. Although, maybe not if you had the arm.”

Bucky gritted his teeth, but didn’t rise to the bait. “I’m not dragging Stark’s kid out of a place he wants to be, especially if it hurts him.”

Clint gestured to Peter’s ruined trousers. “Does that look like he _wants_ to be here?” He exhaled, the pain in his head now a dull ache. He sensed that Peter had at least tried to hold back, or he’d probably wouldn’t be conscious right now. “Fine. Plan B. Peter?”

No response.

“We’re not leaving you, ok? We’ll be right back.”

Peter’s head shot up, looking panicked as Clint made to leave the cupboard. 

“We’ll be right back,” Clint repeated. “Just hold on.”

He closed the door behind him, taking Bucky’s wrist to take him down to the end of the corridor.

“Stop _pulling_ me.”

Clint ignored that. He leaned in so his lips were right by Bucky’s ear, whispering as low as he could so Peter’s hearing would pick it up. “I’m going to call med bay and ask someone to bring up Peter’s tranquilizers.”

Bucky was hesitant. “You’re going to knock him out?”

“Can you think of another way? You’ve seen the kid in a fight; we’re not getting him out of there while he can fight back.”

Bucky grimaced. “What do you think happened?”

“Not my area, so I’m going to get him to the people who can figure out what the hell this is. And while I’m doing that, for god’s sake - go see Bruce.”

Bucky stared at him. “Are you still on that?”

“If there’s a threat to the Compound, we need everyone in fighting shape. Including you. Go see him.”

Clint gave him a slight push towards the door to Bruce’s lab.Bucky hesitated.

“You want to help the kid? Go see Bruce.”

It was a low blow, and they both knew it, but Bucky sighed and relented. “Let me know when he’s ok?”

“The second I know something, you will.”

That seemed to be enough, because Bucky finally gave in, heading the direction of Bruce’s lab as Clint made his way back into the cupboard. “Hey. Told you I’d be back.”  


Peter’s head was back between his knees, not looking at him.

“That’s fine, you don’t have to talk. How about I talk for both of us? Do you want to hear the story of the time Bucky Barnes saved the Howling Commandoes with only one bullet?” He didn’t wait for Peter to answer, just launched into the story, well-worn by Phil’s constant retelling of it, until help arrived and Peter was knocked into oblivion.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some spoilers for Jessica Jones ahead
> 
> TW: There is a nonconsensual kiss and some touching in this chapter, but it's brief

It took all of Clint’s self-control not to have a nasty flashback as he watched over Peter, drugged out of his mind and restrained to a hospital bed.

The restraints were glowing the faint gold that all of Tony’s enhanced-based precautions did. Clint didn’t know the science behind it, and he hadn’t bothered to ask. All he knew was that they worked.

Cho had busied herself for a good hour taking samples while Clint stood on standby in case Peter woke up violent again, as a backup precaution to the restraints. The base of his head was still throbbing from where the teenager had thrown him into the wall. Finally, Cho had said she had what she needed and announced she needed to run further tests elsewhere, so Clint had taken up vigil at Peter’s bedside until, he had assumed, Tony would take his place.

Tony still hadn’t appeared.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”  


_“Yes, Mr Barton?”_  


“Can you relay a message for me?”

_“Certainly.”_

“Can you tell Stark to stop being an idiot and get his stubborn ass to the med bay? Tell him his kid needs him. Not his tech, not his ‘protection’ or whatever the hell Tony thinks he’s been doing lately. He needs _him.”_

There was a long pause, so long Clint was sure F.R.I.D.A.Y. wasn’t going to answer, before she said, _“Mr Stark is indisposed.”_

“Yeah, sure he is.” Which was…weird. Clint and Tony still didn’t spend a lot of time together, but the tension between them had lessened significantly since their talk in the med bay. Whatever had remained after had almost dissipated completely after Tony had risked literal life and limb to pull Natasha out of the Tower fire. Now the reason they didn’t see each other was because Clint was dividing his time between Natasha, Bucky, and the farmhouse, and because Tony was barely seen these days by anyone.

Even so, Clint was sure he’d never refuse a call from anyone telling him Peter was hospitalized, so he tried a different tact. “He’s not hurt, is he? Or sick? And trying to deal with it on his own or something equally stupid like that?”

_“Mr Stark is -”_

“If you tell me ‘Mr Stark is indisposed’ one more time I’m going to make you play WAP on repeat for a week.”

F.R.I.D.A.Y. may have been code, but Tony had plugged her with plenty of personality, and Clint wasn’t surprised at the note of resentment in her voice as she replied, _“Please don’t do that, Mr Barton._ _Mr Stark is not ill or injured.”_

Clint huffed, eyes not leaving Peter’s pale face. They had washed the blood off his hand after confirming that it wasn’t his, but rather belonged to one of the Compound security guards who had taken leave yesterday. They’d contacted him, and he’d insisted he was fine - had just gone home with a nasty flu and would be back in a week or so. Other than mild dehydration and exhaustion, Peter seemed fine, at least physically. Cho was still working on the mentally part.

_Speaking of._ “Any word from Cho, Fri?”

_“None, and she says she’d appreciate it if you’d stopped asking.”_

“What about Bucky? How’s he going with Bruce?”

_“Mr Banner is indisposed.”_

Clint’s head shot up at that. “In the same way as Tony or in a different way to Tony?”

_“Mr Banner is indisposed.”_

_“_ Because he’s working with Bucky, right?”

This time a note of what might have been desperation entered F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s tone as she began again, _“Mr Banner - ”_

Clint didn’t hear the end. Peter’s eyes flew open, casting wildly around him. Clint leaned in immediately, attention now completely on Peter as he rested a hand on his forearm. “Hey, you’re ok. You’re in the med bay. You’re -”

“I need to stay in the cupboard.”

Clint winced. Cho had half-hoped that Peter just needed rest and sleep, but Clint had doubted it. It was never that easy. “Sorry, bud. No more cupboards.”

Peter’s eyes went even wider, expression contorting into one of panic as he struggled against the restraints. “I need -”

“Get Cho, Fri.”

_“I already did.”_

“Hey.” Clint scooted around so he could cup Peter’s cheek, trying to make him look at him, to give him a center point to focus on. Peter looked back at him with desperate eyes, breathing hard. “We don’t know what’s going on, but Cho is looking into it, and we’ve never had a problem she couldn’t solve. She once sewed my entire side back together with plastic. Right, Doctor?”

Cho had entered the room at that point, a needle already in hand. Peter fell back with a low groan, staring at the ceiling. His whole body was shaking. Cho hesitated, assessing the situation, the normally stern face she wore around Clint fading. She had a soft spot for Peter. Then again, e _veryone_ had a soft spot for Peter. “That’s not even close to what I did, Agent Barton. Peter? If you can stay calm, I won’t have to tranquilize you again.”

“I need to stay…” Peter’s voice was strained, his fists clenched. “I need…forever.”

Clint locked eyes with Cho, sharing the concern. “News?” he mouthed, hiding his grimace when Cho shook her head.

A piercing _snap_ split the room that had Clint and Cho both swearing as first Peter’s right and then his left thumb bent at unnatural angles as he started to squeeze his wrists out of the restraints.

“Cho -” Clint started, but the doctor was already sinking the needle into Peter’s neck, the teenager growing rigid before falling back into the pillows with a soft cry before going still. Clint stared down at his mangled hands, which Cho was already seeing to. At least the kid healed fast.

Clint glanced at the restraints holding Peter down. Well, usually he healed fast. “Jesus,” he breathed. “How long is he going to be out for?”

“A few hours. Someone should call his aunt.”

“I will.”  


“I meant Stark. Where is he?”

“He’s indisposed,” Clint muttered, getting to his feet. Just like Bruce, apparently. And Clint hadn’t seen Bucky come back from Bruce’s lab either.

“Going somewhere?”

“Just going to…do a lap around the Compound. Check in on some things.” He paused as he extracted himself from Peter’s bedside. “You going to be ok?

Cho took it in stride. “Natasha is in the next room for observation. I’m sure she can step in if I need someone to calm Peter.”

Clint nodded. Natasha was still on mandatory bed rest, much to her chagrin, but she was at the stage where she could get about easily enough on her own. “Yeah. Natasha works. Also, why is she Natasha and I’m still Agent Barton?”

“Because I like Natasha.”

Clint gave her his crooked grin as he slipped away. “I think deep down you like me better. It’s ok, you can admit it - I won’t tell Nat.”

Cho ignored him. “Are you going to get Stark down here?” She looked back at Peter. “I know he’s capable and all but so young…If Stark’s going to drag him into this stuff, he can at least show up when he’s hurt.”

“I know,” Clint agreed. “I’m with you on that. But...” _But_ _if Tony could be here, he would be. Which implies something is stopping him._ The unease that had been eating at him since they had found Peter in the cupboard swelled. “I’m going to go get Tony.”

He made his way out into the waiting room, meaning to head straight up to Bruce’s labs to ask what the hell was going on when, in his haste, he almost tripped right over Bucky, who was hunched in one of the waiting room chairs. Bucky immediately stood, Clint tracking his side. He was hiding the pain well, but not well enough.

“How is he?” Bucky asked.

“Unconscious. I thought you were going to see Bruce.”

Bucky colored a little, not meeting Clint’s eyes. “The injury really isn’t that big a deal.”

Clint didn’t bother to hide his frustration. “You don’t know that without seeing a doctor.”

“My sitrep is perfect. It was part of the serum; made maintenance easier. And I’m telling you, it’s fine.”

Clint didn’t back off. “Ok, firstly, don’t say maintenance. You’re not a machine. Secondly, even if it is fine, what if it’s not next time?”

“Then I’ll deal.”

“You told me you were going Bruce.”

“Actually, I think you told me that and expected me to go.”

“Yeah, because -” _Because I don’t like seeing you hurt._ “Because you need to. Come on.” Clint made for the door. “I’m on my way up there anyway.”

“I don’t -”

“Barnes, it’s fine, just come see him.”

“I already did!” That stopped Clint in his tracks. He turned back to Bucky, who looked for all the world like a kicked puppy as he shuffled his feet against the waiting room carpet. “He, um, declined.”

Clint backed up so he was face to face with Bucky again, who still wasn’t looking at him. “He what?”

“Just drop it, Barton."

Clint had exactly zero intentions of dropping it. “Did you tell him you were hurt?”

“He told me to go away.” More color than Clint had ever seen on the super-soldier had flooded his cheeks. “He made it very clear he didn’t want me anywhere near his lab, ok? So _drop_ _it.”_

The unease in Clint’s stomach grew. “That doesn’t sound like Bruce. At all. He’s the kind of guy who you could pour soup in his lap and he’d apologize to you.”

“I know…” Bucky cast about for the words, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here. “You see me a…certain way. But that doesn’t mean your team does. And I know Banner and Stark are friends and I killed -”

“You didn’t,” Clint cut him off, only for Bucky to meet him head-on.

“I _did._ ”

“You weren’t in control.”

“I still did it. That’s still on me.”

An awkward silence hung between them as Clint dug into his agent’s training to school his features. “Doesn’t matter,” he landed on. “You’re still hurt. Come on.”

He reached for Bucky’s arm but Bucky pulled back. “I said _no_ , Barton. Back off.”

Clint forced himself to take a breath. As much as he wanted Bucky to see a doctor, _now_ , he understood the importance of the former assassin being able to make his own choices, especially when it came to his body. Not to mention he had more pressing matters to deal with. “Fine. That’s your choice.”

He turned on his heel, Bucky calling after him. “Where are you going?”

“To have a chat with Banner.”

“Clint, don’t -”

But Clint was already out of the room, heading for the elevators that would take him from the med bay to Bruce’s lab, trying to shake Bucky’s words out of his head.

_You weren’t in control._

_I still did it. That’s still on me._

_He’s talking about Hydra,_ the voice that always sounded suspiciously like Phil started in his head. _He’s still processing. He didn’t mean -_

_I know._

_Then don’t be mad at him._

_I’m not mad._

The voice stayed silent, just like Phil always had in his infuriating way every time he had been right, and Clint knew he had been right, and had been too stubborn to admit it.

The doors whooshed open as he made his way along to Bruce’s lab, F.R.I.D.A.Y. opening all the doors for him except the last. The windows that surrounded the lab usually allowed a total view into the ongoings within, but now they were all blacked out, including the door.

Clint tried the security pad. Locked. He knocked. Then he knocked again. “Banner!”

No answer.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.? I need to talk to Bruce. Now.”

_“Mr Banner is indisposed.”_

“He talked to Bucky and now he’s going to talk to me.” He pounded on the door again, this time not letting up until, several seconds later, Bruce’s voice crackled over the intercom next to the door.

_ “I’m busy.” _

“Don’t care,” Clint shot back. “You’re being weird, _F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s_ being weird, which I didn’t know was even possible, and Peter’s breaking his thumbs and screaming about cupboards. I may not be at you and Tony’s level, but I’m not _stupid._ So open the damn door.”

There was a pause, then; _“Barton, I’m busy. Fuck off.”_

Clint blinked, sure his hearing aids were malfunctioning, because there was no way Bruce Banner had just told him to ‘fuck off.’ He’d heard Bruce curse before,  but usually when he had dropped something important or was muttering under his breath when he couldn’t solve an equation. Clint had never, ever heard it directed at someone else, let alone a teammate.

The comm crackled off, and Clint immediately asked, “F.R.I.D.A.Y.? Who’s in there with him?”

_“Mr Lang and Ms Hill.”_

_What the hell?_ “Scott and Maria are in there? _Why?”_

_“Mr Lang has recently returned from a mission and was debriefing Ms Hill.”_

Clint waited for F.R.I.D.A.Y. to elaborate. She didn’t. “I wouldn’t let Hill hear you call her ‘Ms’ anything.”

_“She did not hear me. I am talking only to you.”_

Clint took the hint, backing away from the locked lab door until he was back by the elevators. “Ok, Fri, I get that someone’s put a screw loose in you somewhere, but what can you tell me?”

_“Mr Lang and Ms Hill are assisting Mr Banner.”_

“With what?”

No answer.

“And it’s just them in there?”

No answer.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Clint muttered, hands twitching for a bow that wasn’t there. It wouldn’t fit where he was going anyway.

Never more grateful that Tony had long since given up trying to find a way to keep him out of the ceiling vents, Clint headed for Bruce’s lab.

***

Clint heard them before he saw them.

Bruce and Scott’s voices he recognized, although he couldn’t hear Maria, and there was a third voice, grating and loud with a strong British accent. It was demanding from Bruce deadlines and times, Bruce replying, unsure. Clint paused above where the air vent ended above the lab, peering through the grate. Sure enough, Bruce was hurrying around his lab, with Scott, in full Ant-Man attire giving him an assist, while Maria worked over something in the lab’s kitchenette.

Lounging on the couch at the back of the room was the owner of the voice Clint didn’t recognize. He was dressed in a purple suit, his face half-obscured by the vent grates, but even so, Clint could have sworn he recognized him. Science friend of Bruce’s, maybe? Someone he had seen around the Tower before Bruce’s sojourn in space?

Clint dismissed that thought the moment he had it. The way the guy was speaking to Bruce was not indicative of any sort of friendship, and despite Clint’s soup-in-the-lap comment earlier, Bruce wasn’t the kind of guy to let himself get pushed around his own lab like that. 

He twisted his neck so he could get a better look, but the man was lying with his back to him, his feet kicked up over Bruce’s favorite couch. Clint readjusted his angle, looking for Tony to see if this what had made him ‘indisposed,’ but the engineer was nowhere in sight. Just Bruce, Scott, Maria, and the man in the purple suit.

Clint hesitated, considering. The situation didn’t _look_ life-threatening. Was it some kind of chemical thing? Is that why Peter had been acting nuts earlier, and Bruce was working on an antidote? But then why wouldn’t Bruce just tell him that?

Clint had two choices. Drop in through the vent and demand answers, or retreat and get backup. Peter was out and Tony was AWOL but he was pretty sure Steve and Sam were around the Compound, maybe Rhodey too. Natasha was still in recovery but she was well enough to help, if it came down to it.

And Bucky, if Clint could convince him.

Clint had never been one to weigh pros and cons; he just followed his gut. It hadn’t led him wrong so far. And everything in his gut was screaming at him to back out of the vent, as far away from this situation as possible, and get help.

He was a second away from doing do when Maria approached the purple suited man with a sandwich, and he in turn pulled her unceremoniously onto his lap. 

Clint froze, watching as the man stuffed a bite of sandwich into his mouth and, before he’d finished swallowing, stuck his tongue down Maria’s throat, hands wrapping around her lower back.

Clint had never gotten to know Maria as well as Phil or Fury, but she was a friend and the best person Clint could think of to run New S.H.I.E.L.D. after Fury’s ‘death’. She led with the same ruthless pragmatism as Fury had, although with more of a personal touch. She was one of the few members of the previous S.H.I.E.L.D. who hadn’t abandoned Clint to the wolves after Loki. For that alone she would always hold a high place in Clint’s esteem, which he reserved for very few.

And even if she was someone who engaged in PDA, which she decidedly was not, she also exclusively dated women.

Clint was out of the vent before he had the chance to second-guess it, landing nimbly and using the force to push himself forward, tugging Maria out of the man’s hold. He then abruptly let go as she fought him, shoving him off and returning right back to where she had been sitting.

“Maria?” Clint asked. The purple man’s eyes narrowed in anger and exasperation, glancing from Clint to the vent he had jumped from. In  that moment Clint recognized who he was, even as he realized that he should have run after all, and now it was far too late.

Kevin Thompson. AKA Kilgrave.

After the release of the enhanced from the Raft, Natasha and Clint had meticulously combed through every file on the remaining prisoners to check that Ross hadn’t been keeping anyone else on that floating hellhole that shouldn’t be there.

Kilgrave, without a doubt, should have been there. For all the undeserving people who had been trapped there this past year, Kilgrave had deserved it tenfold. Clint had remembered him in particular, because of what had been listed on his form next to ‘abilities’.

For a second it wasn’t a man in a purple suit in front of him but a god in a black one, and he swept his eyes over Maria’s, checking for blue, but found none. 

Not Loki. But still mind control.

He wasn’t going through that a second time. He couldn’t. That wasn’t an option.

Even as he thought it, Kilgrave opened his mouth, and Clint’s blood turned to ice as he waited to reenter a world without any options at all.

“The _arrow guy?”_ Seriously?” Kilgrave looked more annoyed than angry. He glanced behind Clint, to where Bruce and Scott hadn’t so much as paused in their work. “Yeah, no, you’re not going to be useful. Get out, forget you saw us, and don’t come back.” His hand was resting lighting on Maria’s shoulder, starting to run it down her back again.

Clint waited. Waited for his brains to be pulled out his head, waiting to feel the weight of another shoved in, even as he fought it.

A second passed. Then another. And then Clint realized that there was nothing to fight.

“I said get out!” Kilgrave shoved Maria unceremoniously aside so he could stand up. “What, are you deaf?”

Clint indicating his hearing aids. “Well, yeah.” Then he lunged at Kilgrave.

Or, at least, he made to lunge, meaning to tackle the man into the couch and punch his lights out, but froze when he heard a click and turned to look down the barrel of Maria’s gun.

He could see the regret and fear on her face as she angled her weapon at him. That was enough to tell him that she would shoot him through the heart in a second, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

“Damnit,” Kilgrave was cursing, the next word bellowed across the room. “ _Damnit!_ How many of you are there?” Offhand, he told Maria, “If arrow guy moves, shoot him.”

Clint’s muscles locked up, trying not to give Maria even a hint of motive to pull the trigger as Kilgrave came towards him, grabbing Clint’s jaw to shove his face up so it was an inch away from his. Clint fought the urge to sock him in the nose, making do with glaring straight back, not breaking eye contact. He wondered if Kilgrave could read minds as well as control them. The file hadn’t said he could, but Clint ran through the top ten most gruesome ways he could think of to kill a person anyway. _Take your pick, fucker._

“So, you’re another one. What, you enhanced too? Strong? Is that it?”

Clint kept his face neutral, not giving away that he had no idea what Kilgrave was talking about.

"But I’ve controlled enhanced before...” He studied Clint a second longer before he released his jaw, stomping over to Bruce instead, his next words aimed at him. “Do you see what I have to put up with? How dangerous it is for people like me out there? I wasn’t hurting anybody! I was just living my life and then that bitch betrayed me, left me, after I gave her everything she ever could have wanted.”

Clint was desperately trying to keep Kilgrave in sight without turning his head, risking another glance at Maria when Kilgrave paced out of view. Her grip on the gun was firm, resolute.

Kilgrave hadn’t stopped ranting. “Do you know what I did for her? I found her childhood house, the only place she’d ever been happy, and I bought it. With _money._ Didn’t make the owner give it to me or anything, no, I paid for it out of my own pocket. Redecorated it just right, took forever - and I did all that myself as well, for _her._ And I got in house staff to wait on her hand and foot, and even before that I was taking her to five-star hotels and offering absolutely anything she wanted, and you should have seen the way she was living without me. Practically squalor, and she was a raging drunk. I didn’t have to help her, but I did, and she never even said thank you.” 

He had been pacing back and forth through the diatribe, and almost tripping over Scott.

“Out of the way, for god’s sake.”

Scott hurried backward, almost knocking over a workbench in his haste. He shot a terrified look at Clint. _Help us._

_I’m trying._ Clint gave him the smallest nod, trying to communicate that he was going to get them out of this. Somehow. Clint eyed the distance between him and Maria’s gun, calculating.

Kilgrave wasn’t finished. “I even offered to be a hero, do you know that? To go out and help people with her. I would have done that, all of it, just for her. And you know what she did? This girl who I’d slaved away for? She locked me in a cage and she tortured me!” Kilgrave slammed his fists down onto one of Bruce’s workbench, glaring at a memory only he could see. “And then she sent me off to the damn Raft. You know what the Raft is, don’t you?”

_Yeah, and you deserve to rot there, bastard._

“And then she left me there while she went off with _Patsy,_ ” he spat the word “and kept on living like she’d never even met me.” Kilgrave turned on Bruce, “It must be ready by now, my dad did most of the math for this already.”

If Bruce had a plan, he wasn’t showing it. “It’s complicated,” Bruce answered, deliberately not looking Clint’s way. “I don’t know if this will strengthen you or kill you.”

_Oh, please let it kill him._ Not that Clint had any faith that it would. Nothing was ever allowed to be that easy.

Kilgrave drummed his fingers on the table, noticing where Bruce was deciding not looking. He stared Clint down while he said his next words. “Tell me, doctor, are you doing everything in your power to make what I asked you to make?”

Clint could see that Bruce was fighting the answer even as he said, “No. I was before,” he amended quickly.

“But not now.”

Bruce closed his eyes. “No.”

Kilgrave hadn’t taken his eyes off Clint. “Dad said I needed Jessica to make it work. Because she could resist me. He needed her DNA, for data.” He snapped his fingers at Clint. “Is having his DNA or whatever going to help?”

“Yes,” Bruce whispered, shooting Clint an apologetic look even as Kilgrave leaned in, annoyed.

“Don’t hold back information like that from me again. And hurry it up. We’re on the clock.” He pointed at Clint. “So go get what you need from him.”

Yeah, that wasn’t happening.

Clint felt the first bullet whizz over his head as he dropped to the floor, rolling towards Maria and knocking her off her feet. She struggled, trying to twist the gun towards him, and Maria was an excellent agent but Clint was better, not holding back as he twisted the weapon out of her grasp. He’d almost definitely sprained her wrist, but he was sure she wouldn’t care about that as he raised the gun and fired, with precision aim, right at Kilgrave’s mouth.

It would have hit. It would have ended right then and there if there wasn’t a blur as both Bruce and Scott raced to take the bullet instead.

Bruce got there first.

Clint raised the gun a second time even as Scott shielded the man with his own body. Clint could still make the shot. Clint always made the shot.

His finger went to squeeze the trigger a second before there was a splitting pain in the back of his head and he was falling forward as a strong arm locked around his throat.

He didn’t waste a breath even as the world spun, using the arm as leverage to flip Maria over his head and onto her back. He made the split-second decision to risk loosening his grip on the gun to dive forward and perform a cognitive recalibration on his director.

In other words, he hit her really hard on the head.

It should have knocked her out, but she saw the blow coming and twisted at the last minute. The move was purely from instinct and years of rigorous training, because Clint saw Maria’s look of panic as she realized she had had an out, a way to make things easier for Clint to end this, and hadn’t taken it.

She hit her head hard anyway, slamming against the workshop tiles, just as a groan of pain ripped Clint’s eyes back to the front of the workshop. 

Scott was standing over Bruce, eyes huge as he pressed a foot down on the wound leaking blood from the physicist’s side. “Pack it in,” Kilgrave ordered Clint. “Now.”

Clint had no intention to. The agent part of his mind took over as he rolled to his feet. Bruce would heal. Scott would get over it. All that mattered right now was taking this bastard out.

But the distraction was enough of a wrench in the works to grind Clint’s rescue attempt to a clattering halt. He was barely getting back to his feet before a dazed but still determined Maria threw herself at him, the sheer surprise of it enough for her to wrench the gun back out of his hands and press it against the back of his head.

Kilgrave was swearing, looking annoyed at the splatters of blood that stained the sleeve of his suit. “Did no one listen when I say I wanted to get this done quickly?” He glared at Scott. “Do you know how to patch a bullet wound?”

Scott shook his head, foot still planted in Bruce’s injury. “I mean, I can try, and he can heal but -”

“Yeah, none of that big green guy stuff.” Kilgrave indicated Maria instead. “What about you, doll? You’re trained for this, aren’t you?”

Clint ran a new calculation of whether he could get the gun away from his head before Maria shot him. He doubted it, and Maria would never forgive herself if she pulled that trigger, coercion or no. Not to mention that it would leave all three of his teammates alone and helpless against this psychopath.

Maria swallowed, her tone remaining professional. “A wound that severe needs a real medic, and equipment I don’t have.”

“For god’s sake!” Kilgrave scanned all of them, then snapped into a plan of action. “Fine. You.” The words were aimed at Scott. “Go to the kitchen. Shrink. Then get in the blender.”

Clint just managed to catch the look of absolute terror on Scott’s face before he was gone, a tiny figure making its way across the floor to the kitchenette. He snapped up to Kilgrave, the movement jostling the metal resting on his skull. “Kill him and the Avengers are never going to stop coming after you.” _Not that we’re going to let you go anyway, bastard._

Kilgrave frowned. “I’m not going to kill him. I don’t _kill_ people, no matter what _Jessica_ says, all high and mighty. She’s not a hero, even though she can’t admit it to herself. She’s _actually_ killed people. Probably going to kill more. But did you people go after her? Lock her away? Although, I have to say, seeing Patsy sent off to the waterlogged donut almost made up for it.”

Clint heard a lid open, dropping onto the kitchen bench. Scott had reached the blender. “The only way you get out of this alive is if everyone in this room does too.”

Kilgrave stared him down. “Well, that’s up to you. Like I said, I don’t kill people. You on the other hand.” He gestured around the lab. “You so-called heroes kill thousands in a single fight.”

Clint ignored the jab as Kilgrave snapped his fingers at Maria.

“You. Go stand next to the blender. Turn it on if arrow guy does anything else stupid.”

Clint’s heart sped up, watching where Bruce was still bleeding out on the floor as the gun finally left his head. When he dared look behind him, Maria’s hand was hovering over the blender’s on switch. There was no way he was getting to her before she pressed it.

Kilgrave grimaced as he took a step backward, avoiding getting blood on his shoes. “She said you needed a medic, equipment. Call one who can fix you, so we can get back to work.”

Clint blamed the wording for what Bruce said next. That Kilgrave specified a medic, not a doctor. 

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.?” Bruce groaned, trying to keep his eyes open as blood soaked the floor around him. “Get Sam.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you spot the John Mulaney reference?


	4. Chapter 4

_You weren’t in control._

_I still did it. That’s still on me._

Bucky groaned, the sound muffled as he hid his face. That had been unbelievably stupid. The look that had crossed Clint’s face when he had said it was burned against his eyelids. 

Clint had never dived into his time under Loki’s control. He’d grazed the surface now and then to provide an empathetic ear, but always in such a detached and clinical way that Bucky had been sure he was past it.

Again. Unbelievably stupid. No one ever really got past something like that. He knew that better than anyone.

He heard a presence in the chair next to him, knew who it was even before he lifted his head. He’d been meaning to go back to his rooms, but the idea of returning to the confined space, alone, again, had been too much. So he’d remained in the med bay waiting room instead, and he supposed it was only a matter of time before Natasha found him.

She looked better; or at least Bucky assumed she did from the way she was moving around. Half of her face and her arms still covered in gauze. Still, it was a remarkably quick recovery.

She seemed to read his mind, like she always did. “Cho invented what she calls a cradle, years back. It got destroyed after it made Vision, but she and Tony have been rebuilding it. Improving it. And an alliance with Wakanda has its benefits.” She indicated Bucky’s side. “We don’t risk leaving injuries untreated here.”

The words were automatic in his mouth. “Training accident. It’s fine.”

Natasha made a move that would have raised one eyebrow, if they hadn’t been burned away in the Tower fire. She’d drawn them on with a light pencil instead. “You’re not really trying to lie to _me,_ are you?”

He shot her a small smile. “Guess I should know better.”

Natasha motioned her head towards the med bay. “We have a whole team of doctors in there, you know.”  


“I make them nervous.”

“I’m guessing that’s a two-way street.”

Bucky went to deny it, remembered who was talking to, then relented. “People poking around my body…I’m not a fan.”

“I understand. That doesn’t stop you being injured.”

“I’m healing, and I have some of Steve’s pain meds. I’m -”

“Don’t you dare tell me you’re fine, Barnes.”

He amended. “I’m handling it.”

She eyed him for a moment, then said, “Fine. You’re handling it. But the moment I get the sense you’re not, I’m going to tell Steve. Ok?”

His fist clenched. “Don’t do that. Please. He doesn’t…” _Need more trouble on his plate._ “He doesn’t need to know. Because there’s nothing _to_ know.”

“He’s my team leader,” Natasha replied simply. “And my friend. So if I decide this is relevant information to share, I’ll share it. Now, what else is wrong?”

The tone of voice made it clear that she wasn’t going to take a brush off. She and Clint were similar in that way; knowing when to push, when to back off. He guessed they had learned that from being partners for so long.

His eyes caught on Natasha’s arrow necklace, and suddenly this was the last person he wanted to be sharing a room with.

He’d seen Natasha and Clint together a few times. The way they trained, predicting each other’s every move, one never quite managing to come out on top. The easy communication, the way they seemed to know what the other needed without words. The way Clint had waited it out in the med bay after the fire until he knew she was going to be ok. They were so perfectly matched, and Natasha was one of the few people he could actually call a friend around the Compound.

And he was having _those_ thoughts about her boyfriend.

He stood, suddenly needing to be anywhere but here. Natasha stood with him, concern tugging on what he could see of her features. “Where are you going?”

“I shouldn’t be here.”

Natasha offered him a smile. “Neither should I. But bed rest was getting boring. I’ve never been very good at staying still for too long.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Come visit me later.” It was an invitation, not an order, and Bucky went to nod in agreement before the waiting room doors burst open, and the blur that was Sam Wilson rushed past them into Peter’s hospital room.

Natasha and Bucky shared a look before they were both hurrying after him, entering the doors a split second after they heard Cho’s indignant, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?  


Sam had bypassed Cho and Peter completely, going straight for the cabinet at the back of the room, piling his arms with bandages. Bucky spared a glance at the unconscious kid on the table; the one who had saved Steve’s life in Siberia. He seemed so young to have prevented Bucky from losing so much.

“Hey!” Cho barked, straightening up from where she had been tending to Peter’s still form, eyes narrowing when Sam continued to ignore her, although Bucky would bet it was more from confusion than anger. Sam, with his history as a medic in the field, was one of the few Avengers with whom Cho was actually friendly with, which meant there was only one reason he was raiding her cupboards now without so much as a hello.

Natasha asked before Bucky could. “Who’s hurt?”

Sam ignored her too, seeming to have what he came for as he sprinted back out the door, ignoring Cho’s continued protests.

Natasha recovered first. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.? Is someone hurt?

_“Mr Wilson is addressing the situation.”_

“That’s not an answer.” Natasha only got halfway through the sentence before there was a gasp and a moan as Peter chose that moment to spring back to consciousness, eyes rolling around the room as he tried to tear open the restraints holding him down.

Cho swore, trying to calm the thrashing teen. “Damnit, he was meant to be out for hours.”

Peter groaned as he tugged on the straps, his broken thumbs straining against the gold-tinged metal.

Cho tried to soothe him, shifting the restraints so Peter’s struggling didn’t knock the broken bones. “Natasha! Help me.”

Natasha went to Peter’s side, murmuring comforts as she placed one hand on his forearm, pulling up the visitor’s seat by his side as Cho worked. Bucky hung back, awkward. For all that he owed Peter, he’d given him a wide berth. He’d seen how Stark had treated him in Siberia. And he knew Stark wouldn’t want him in a hundred feet of the teenager, ever.

Natasha looked up at him, looking half-annoyed that Bucky was still there. “Follow Sam.”

“I’m not meant to walk through the Compound.” He’d done that once today, and it had been awful. Every corner he’d turned he was terrified he’d run into someone who, at best, knew he wasn’t meant to be outside of his rooms and, at worst, would be terrified at seeing him.

He wasn’t confined to the rooms, not officially, but it had been an agreement when he moved to the Compound. He had his space. Stark had his. Their paths crossing over Clint’s bedside had been the only anomaly, and was not one Bucky wanted to repeat anytime soon. Or ever. Which wasn’t easy when he was sharing a building with the man.

Natasha ran her free hand over Peter’s forehead as he tried to lift himself off the bed again. “Someone is hurt, and Peter needs me here. So follow him.”

She was pushing him, not too hard and not too gentle, just like Clint knew how to do. He wondered if he’d learned that from her, or the other way around. However, if someone really was hurt, he couldn’t find a reason to say no, so he swallowed his trepidation and followed Sam out the door.

He could hear Sam running back towards the elevators. He caught up to him just as the doors were shutting, resisted the urge to let them do so, and shoved his hand between them instead.

Sam didn’t even glance at him as Bucky pushed his way in, the elevator shooting upwards. “Natasha told me to follow you. Just in case.”

Sam didn’t acknowledge him, staring straight ahead. Bucky leaned against the elevator railing, trying to look as non-threatening as possible. Stark wasn’t the only one he’d been avoiding in the Compound. Sam put in the effort, but Bucky didn’t miss that Sam was never fully relaxed whenever they were in the same room.

“Is everyone ok?”

Sam continued to stare.

“Wilson.”

Nothing.

Bucky shifted off the railing, moving a little closer, seeing if he’d get a reaction. He didn’t. _“Sam.”_

Still nothing. Bucky frowned, running through reasons in his head. He and Sam had never gelled, butting heads more often than not, but if there was one thing Sam Wilson wasn’t, it was _rude._

The elevator doors pinged open and Sam made his way out, still not acknowledging Bucky as he made his way towards, Bucky realized with a flip of his stomach, Banner’s lab, the last place in the Compound he wanted to go ever again.

Bucky had dealt with a lot of emotions over the past few months, but the humiliation at being told, point blank, that he wasn’t wanted, and then having to tell that to Clint who had been so sure that Banner would help, had managed to be more awful than the night terrors.

Well, most of the night terrors.

_Clint._ He’d been going to see Banner. And now Sam was running there with a single-minded determination and an armful of medical equipment.

“Sam, wait!” Bucky followed the pararescue’s frantic path to the lab, not wanting to slow him down but needing to know. “Is Clint hurt?”

He may as well have been part of the wall for all that Sam acknowledged him. Bucky thought back to Peter fighting in the cupboard, and now Sam was acting strange, and maybe Clint was hurt, and…

_And now is probably a very good time to call Steve._

The rejection of that idea was so strong that it was almost physical. If it was urgent, surely F.R.I.D.A.Y would have contacted Steve already. The idea of Bucky doing it, of dropping yet another burden in Steve’s lab, was not an idea he could stomach for very long.

He’d wait. At least until he knew he couldn’t sort this out himself.

And if he couldn’t sort this himself…he had to admit, the idea that he would call Steve and Steve would run headlong into whatever danger there was, _again,_ was -

“Bruce? It’s me.”

The sound of Sam finally speaking made Bucky jump, pulling him back from his thoughts. The lab door opened for Sam without preamble, and Bucky peered past him, trying to see in.

He only got a glimpse before Sam went to close the door in his face. As subtly as he could, Bucky slipped a foot into between the fast-closing gap and ducked out of sight, pulling the door almost to.

Through the slit that remained, Bucky could see Clint. Bucky breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn’t hurt until he took in his friend’s position. Clint was kneeling on the floor, eyes fixed on something Bucky couldn’t see, hands clasped to the back of his head like a prisoner.

Bucky was sure he was being stealthy, but Clint’s head whipped around anyway, catching his eye. Seeing the warning there, Bucky stayed back, assessing the situation.

Sam had vanished out of sight, and he could hear low voices coming from the left side of the room, beyond what he could see through the door. On the right side, Maria Hill was frozen in the kitchen, her hand hovering awkwardly in the air.

Bucky looked back to Clint just in time to catch his sideways look at Hill. No, not at Hill. At her hand. It seemed to be hovering over…a blender?

Bucky didn’t know Hill well, but he liked her. She managed to pull off a consistent combination of kindness and professionalism whenever she checked in, which she did more often than her mandatory quota as the New S.H.I.E.L.D. director would dictate. It didn’t hurt that Clint always spoke highly of her too, and as Bucky knew that Clint gave his trust to precious few, that counted for a lot.

And, if he was being honest, he was relieved it was no longer Nick Fury running the show. He wasn’t so sure the man he had tried to assassinate would be so forgiving.

Bucky stained his ears, tuning into the conversation he couldn’t see. It sounded like Sam and Banner, although Banner seemed strained enough for Bucky to guess that he was the one that was hurt.

Then a third voice. Loud, British, unfamiliar. Demanding to know how long Sam would be. Then ordering Sam to go faster.

Bucky willed Clint to look back at him, to give him more information, but Clint’s eyes were resolutely fixed ahead so as not to give Bucky’s position away. Bucky put his attention back to Hill instead, eyes looking her up and down to try and find what Clint had been trying to tell him.

Then, he caught the slightest movement. Not from Hill. From inside the kitchen appliance she was standing next to.

Only Bucky’s enhanced vision let him catch what the tiny form inside was.

He scrambled back from the door, careful not to make any noise, retreating up the corridor. “Um, F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”

Even after months in the Compound, Bucky still felt awkward talking to the A.I. who ran it, but F.R.I.D.A.Y. replied, as polite and professional as ever, _“Can I help you?”_

“Yeah…can you tell me the situation in Banner’s lab?” _Like why the fuck is Scott Lang in a blender?_

_“Mr Banner is indisposed._ ”

“I figured that much out, thanks.” Bucky backed up even further, his breath catching as he fixed together the pieces of the puzzle. Peter’s breakdown. Sam ignoring him. Hill standing motionless with her hand over a particularly nasty kill switch.

He knew mind control when he saw it.

_Hydra,_ his panicked brain supplied him first. _They’re back._

He took several deep breaths, staving off the rising panic in his chest, finding the logic before he could spiral further. Hydra was destroyed. And even if they weren’t, Shuri had taken away all the programming. They couldn’t trigger it; there was nothing left to trigger.

Bucky wanted to believe Shuri on that point. He knew he should. But he could never shake himself of the doubt that she had missed something, something buried deep inside. Something that could never be fixed.

Not that that mattered. The others hadn’t had programming to exploit. Which meant, Shuri’s treatment or not, if he went in there he was risking putting himself under someone else’s control all over again.

He drew his thoughts back to Clint, kneeling and unmoving on the ground. He hadn’t had the same expression on his face as there had been on Hill’s. Clint was in full agent mode, serious and grounded in a way Bucky didn’t see him bring out anywhere else.

Bucky thought back to the other voice he’d heard; the one that had been giving orders that Bruce and Sam had been following without doubt. The owner of the voice had most likely had them, Hill and Scott for longer than Clint. Maybe the mind control took some time to be applied?

That was a long shot that offered exactly zero comfort. Just because Clint wasn’t acting controlled, doesn’t mean he wasn’t. It didn’t mean Bucky wouldn’t face the same fate the second he walked through those doors.

Bucky spent half a second toying with the idea of calling for backup before he dismissed it. He was already here. Natasha was hurt and Steve was…and he wasn’t dragging Steve near this. Just the thought of someone trying to control Steve like Hydra had controlled him -

No. He definitely wasn’t calling Steve.

Ok. Priorities.

Even though he wanted to pull Clint out first, Bucky reasoned that that wasn’t the most practical move. He ran through the situation again, drawing a battle map in his mind, running strategy like he had done a hundred times over with Howling Commandoes.

Priority one: innocents and civilians first.

_“_ F.R.I.D.A.Y.? _”_

_“Yes, Mr Barnes?”_

Well, at least she’d finally stopped calling him sergeant. “I need your help.” 

It felt very strange talking to a machine he couldn’t see, but F.R.I.D.A.Y replied immediately, _“I am here to assist you.”_

“Can you evacuate the building?”

There was a pause, like F.R.I.D.A.Y. was hesitating. When she spoke, her tone was regretful. _“I cannot. Mr Kilgrave has instructed that all potential resources remain close in case they are needed.”_

_Resources_. Like they weren’t even human. “Kilgrave? Is that the man in the lab?” Then he processed the implications of her sentence, and balked. Could mind control extend to an AI as well? F.R.I.D.A.Y. almost seemed human at times, but surely whatever was messing with his teammates’ brains couldn’t get into a computer? Right?

_Focus._ Workshop. Rescue. Whatever was going on with the AI, she at least seemed to be trying to help him.

Ok, so if he couldn’t get the civilians out of harm’s way, he could at least keep the harm as far away from them as possible. Neutralize the situation in the lab; don’t let it spread.

Priority two: save whoever is in the most danger.

He remembered the tiny form in the blender; how close Hill’s hand was to turning it on. As much as a more selfish part of him wanted to rescue Clint first, he knew he had to go for Scott.

He turned back to F.R.I.D.A.Y. Clint had told him countless times that he didn’t need to look the ceiling when he spoke to her, that F.R.I.D.A.Y. was everywhere, but Bucky couldn’t help it. “What _can_ you tell me about what’s going on in Banner’s lab?”

_“I have been instructed to ensure that Mr Banner remains undisturbed.”_

“Is that your whole objective? Making sure Banner isn’t disturbed in…whatever it is he’s doing?”

_“That is correct.”_

Bucky swallowed, thinking. “Is he using anything in that kitchen right now?”

_“He is not.”_

“Could you cut power to the kitchen without disturbing his…work?”

F.R.I.D.A.Y. was quiet for a long moment before she said, “ _That is in my parameters. In fact, his work does not require power to the whole lab for at least the next fifteen minutes.”_

Ok. One problem down. About fifty or so to go.

He knew what he was risking. That there was every chance he was going to make things worse, not better. That he was going to make himself back into a weapon with someone else’s finger on the trigger.

Then Bucky remembered Clint on his knees, hands behind his head. Trapped in a room with a man with mind control. And, after seeing the expression on Clint’s face after Bucky had said…that, Bucky knew he wasn’t the only one in the Compound that would rather die than be subjected to someone else’s power.

But it wouldn’t come to that. Bucky wouldn’t let it.

Priority three: Reduce as much damage as possible, as quickly as possible.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.? Cut the power. I’m going in.”

*** 

Clint’s knees were aching, but that was the least of his problems right now.

He’d continued doing as Kilgrave had instructed, not moving for fear of Maria making an Ant-Man smoothie as he knelt on the ground near the kitchen, hands resting on his head. The discomfort in his shoulders was making itself known too, but Clint was pushing through it, trying in vain to think of any way out of this that didn’t get a teammate killed.

So far he’d come up with _nada._

At first, he’d tried to get Kilgrave to lift the not moving order by offering to stem Bruce’s bleeding until Sam arrived. That had only succeeded in Kilgrave adding Clint talking to the list of things that would make Maria press the blender switch. 

Bruce had done the best he could without aid, adding pressure to the wound with detached expertise as he sat up against a workbench with a wince. He let his head hang in what looked like pain and defeat, but Clint caught the edges of his lips moving and realized it was a front for Bruce to take advantage of Clint’s flawless lipreading.

_Wants me to make him stronger,_ Bruce mouthed. _Against people resistant to him._

Maria’s eyes were still fixed right on him, and while Clint wasn’t sure if mouthing back counted as talking or moving, he wasn’t about to bet Scott’s life on it. So he stayed still, hoping that Bruce knew he had understood.

_F.R.I.D.A.Y. can’t help,_ Bruce continued. _Tony is -_

Sam’s voice filled the room before he could finish, calling Kilgrave’s attention back towards Bruce as he told F.R.I.D.A.Y. to let Sam back in to patch up the leaking hole in Bruce’s shoulder. Kilgrave kept careful watch throughout constantly asking Sam how much longer and demanding he work faster. Bruce didn’t dare send out any more information, leaving Clint to wonder what Bucky was planning to get them out of this.

Clint’s heart had stopped when he’d seen him in the doorway. He’d hoped Bucky had gone for help, or at least evacuated the building so they could stop Kilgrave from getting hold of any more leverage. Clint half-wondered if he’d gone to Steve, but the more he thought about it, the more he doubted it. As frustrating as that was, Clint could only half-blame him. Clint would never drag Natasha near this in a hundred years. While the Red Room didn’t quite qualify as brain-washing in the same way Loki and Hydra had messed with him and Bucky, Kilgrave was about as close to Natasha’s worst fear as it got. She’d sworn never to be anyone’s weapon or property ever again. He wouldn’t risk that for her, ever.

If there was the slimmest of silver linings on the whole Loki situation, Clint had been glad it was him and not Natasha. Natasha could come back from almost anything, but he wasn’t sure if she’d have come back from that.

Whatever Bucky did, Clint willed that he stayed away as well. He’d come so far, and someone else getting in his head would -

Well, Clint wasn’t sure if Bucky would come back either.

The minutes ticked by and, with no sign from the outside, Clint let himself feel some hope that Bucky had gotten the hell out of there and gone for backup; one less thing to worry about.

That hope lasted until Bruce got shakily to his feet, Sam’s work done. Clint followed the movement, hoping that Kilgrave would dismiss Sam and tell him to forget this ever happened, like he had tried on Clint.

No dice. Kilgrave snapped his fingers at Sam, who was disposing of the now blood-covered heavy-duty gloves he’d used to patch up Bruce’s wound. “You. You’re the new assistant. Do what Banner says, and be quick about it.”

Sam nodded, robot-like, as he asked Bruce, “What do you need?”

Bruce’s eyes were on Clint, filled with apology, as he said, “I need his blood.”

Great. This day just kept getting better and better.

It took all of his willpower not to move as Sam approached him, needle and vials in hand. For an awful moment (and these moments were always awful, waking him up several times a night no matter how much mandated therapy he was put through), his agent brain took over.

He had a shot at taking Kilgrave out, now. He wouldn’t be expecting it, and he hadn’t yet ordered Sam to protect him at all costs like he must have Maria, Bruce and Scott before Clint entered the room. Maria still had her gun, but it was holstered, her trigger-finger hovering over the blender instead. He’d probably make to Kilgrave before she shot at him. Bruce would try to get in his way but if Kilgrave had really commanded him to not do anything even remotely Hulk-related, Clint could get past him easily. He could get his hands on Kilgrave’s neck.

Twist. Dead. Over.

If he didn’t do it, Kilgrave would make Bruce use his blood to overcome whatever resistance he and the woman he had been ranting about had to the mind control. And then he’d be unstoppable, and they were all screwed.

Sam was kneeling next to him now, searching his arm for a vein. Now or never.

Clint considered the choice for another terrible three seconds, more out of duty and years of experience than because he’d actually do it. He’d never sacrificed a teammate, ever, and if he could avoid doing it now he would. It was something he and Natasha had discussed at length, their close partnership providing their greatest weakness as well as strength. They had both decided to never let the other one be used against them. Mission first.

They’d been on a lot of missions. They’d both fallen into enemy hands. And they were both still here, because they both knew that was an agreement neither of them would ever keep.

Clint forced himself not to flinch as the needle pierced his arm and he felt blood being drawn.

“Sorry,” he heard Sam say, under his breath. “I’m sorry, I can’t…I have to. I’m sorry.”

Clint couldn’t reply, so he just waited it out. If things got dire later, maybe that hard choice would have to be made. But he wasn’t there yet. Bucky was free. Bucky knew they were here.

“Barnes followed me up,” Sam breathed before getting back to his feet to pass the blood to Bruce.

_Come on, Barnes. Find a way._

He’d barely finished thinking it when all the lights went out, plunging them into darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

The second the lights were down, Bucky was moving.

It was pitch black, but he’d calculated his move before F.R.I.D.A.Y. had cut the power. He threw himself into the lab, going straight for the kitchen and yanking the plug for the blender out of the wall. He had to shove Hill aside to do it, feeling as he did so the graze of a gun holstered on her hip.

The plug was barely free before the backup generators kicked in, flooding the room with light again. Bucky instantly went for Hill, yanking the gun out of her belt and tossing it into a corner. In his peripherals, he saw Clint lunge at Sam, gripping him in a headlock as he yelled something to Bucky about getting out, about running, _now._

Bucky had exactly zero intentions of leaving Clint to deal with this alone, even as he ducked a blow from Hill, feinting left so he could dodge and wrap his arm around her shoulders instead, pinning her flush to his chest.

_“STOP!”_

Bucky froze, looking over the man in a purple suit in a corner, heart racing. Had he missed a hostage? Someone else he hadn’t seen?

But Kilgrave wasn’t threatening anyone, not directly. He wasn’t even holding a weapon. Banner was propped up against a workbench, bandages cocooning one shoulder, but Kilgrave’s attention wasn’t on him. He was just glaring at Bucky, impatiently tapping his foot against the floor.

“Damnit Barnes, run!” That was Clint, trapped against the floor by Sam’s weight. Sam was squirming in his grip, clutching a vial of blood like it was made of solid gold, knuckles white from the strength of the grip.

“Good.” The man ran his eyes over Bucky, then the other occupants of the room, considering. “No, that one’s too many.” He looked back at Bucky. “You. _Out.”_

Bucky was still scanning the room, looking for the threat.

Kilgrave’s eyes narrowed. “That means _now!”_

Bucky shot a sideways look at Clint, looking for an explanation. Clint’s eyes widened in surprise, then relief, half-laughing. “Son of a bitch.”

“For god’s sake!” The man swept his hand across a bench, sending lab equipment smashing across the floor. Clint pushed Sam away and threw himself forward with a “Barnes, take him out!”. Bruce moved to block his way, groaning as it pulled at his wound, but he was too slow. Clint would get there first.

Or he would have done if Sam hadn’t snagged his ankle and sent him tumbling to the floor.

Clint managed to get his hands in front of him just in time to stop his face from slamming into the ground. He was halfway out of Sam’s grip when Kilgrave yelled the words. “Everyone who is _actually_ listening to me, cut out your own hearts. Not you,” he snarled at Bruce, even as Bruce reached for one of the pieces of broken glass from the floor. “Get the blood, then take me to the backup.”

Bucky was a step away from blocking Kilgrave’s path to the door when he was caught off guard as Hill slammed an elbow into his stomach. He rolled with the impact, but it was enough for Hill to dodge out of his grip, diving straight for a kitchen knife that she plunged towards her chest.

Bucky caught her wrist just as the tip pierced through her shirt, ignoring the roar of pain the movement sent up his injured side. Hill’s blouse stained red as Bucky tore the weapon from her grip, the director already scrambling for another. Her other wrist appeared to be damaged, however, and that was enough for him to restrain her by the elbows even as she lashed out against him, fighting to get to anything sharp in her line of vision. When she realized she was trapped, she tried to lift her pinned hands to her chest to scratch at her heart instead, and Bucky had no way of stopping her.

Ok, maybe Clint did have a point about the metal arm.

Clint had also given up on catching Kilgrave, swearing loudly as the man wrenched the vial of blood out of Sam's hand and then bundled Bruce towards the door. Clint was forced to catch Sam, who had been going for the broken glass on the floor, around the waist instead, heaving him back. He shoved him towards Bucky. “Don’t let him hurt himself!”

Bucky barely had time to answer that he couldn’t restrain two mind-controlled friends at once, his point made as Sam reached for the kitchen knife Bucky had made Hill drop. Bucky cursed as he shifted the arm on Hill to her throat so he could wrench her to the side. “I’m so sorry,” he breathed. And then he brought his boot down on Sam’s hand.

Sam cried out even as he tried to use his free hand to scrabble for the knife, so Bucky shifted his foot to Sam’s neck instead, pinning him in place. He turned to Clint, about to demand an explanation for why he had let Sam go in the first place. Clint was overturning the blender onto the floor, the figure inside bursting back to full size and with a spray of blood that streaked across Clint’s face.

The words died on Bucky’s lips as he saw the jagged wound that had cut straight through the suit into Scott’s chest from where he had thrown himself on the blender blades.

Bucky just had time to see Clint find the release for Scott’s helmet before Hill writhed against him as Sam struck out with a well-aimed kick at the back of his knee. He had a split second to decide who to hang onto, and as Sam was closer to the knife, Bucky pushed Hill in Clint’s direction and dropped to put a knee in Sam’s back, using his weight to hold him down as he shoved the knife out of reach under a kitchen cabinet.

Clint cursed but took his hands off Scott long enough to catch Hill, wrapping her in a headlock. She fought him even as she said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” Clint grunted, tightening his hold.  


“I shot at you -”

“Wasn’t you,” Clint replied, as Hill’s struggles grew weaker. Bucky took a page out of his book, dropping more of his weight onto Sam so he couldn’t get away as he reached for a pressure point on his neck.

“Sorry,” he repeated.

“Do what you have to,” Sam got out. Bucky squeezed, wincing at the way Sam jerked beneath him, but soon he and Hill were unconscious and Clint was asking F.R.I.D.A.Y. for help.

_“Medical aid is approaching the lab.”_

Bucky removed himself from Sam and raced over to where Scott was lying on the ground, groaning as blood soaked through the suit. Even so, he was still trying to get up, eyes casting about for something else sharp to cut into himself with.

The wound was even worse up close; a ragged, deep chasm with torn edges from the serrated blade.

“Hey guys,” Scott managed. He looked down at the blood, “Oh, wow. That should probably be inside me, right?” Even as he was speaking, he brought one hand up to the wound to slip his fingers inside and reach for his heart.

Bucky caught him before he could, Scott struggling in his grip, causing a fresh spurt of blood.

Clint was already ransacking the room, digging out some old cables that looked like they belonged more in Tony’s workshop than Bruce’s lab. He heaved Sam upright first, propping him up against a bench and starting to bind his hands behind him, around one of the table legs.  


“Careful,” Bucky warned him. “I, um…his hand.”

Clint saw, then nodded. “Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

Clint finished securing Sam’s hands and wrapped a length of cable around his arms and chest for good measure before he moved onto Hill, casting a frustrated look at the door as he did so.

“He can’t get far,” Bucky said, guessing where Clint's mind was. "He came to the Compound for a reason. He's not going to run yet."

Clint finished tying up Hill and dashed back to Scott’s side, collecting up the leftover medical supplies from Sam’s treatment of Bruce on his way. “Hold his hands.”

Bucky forced Scott’s hands together long enough for Clint to bandage them from wrist to fingertips, before pushing them down and using the last cable to bind his forearms to his hips. Scott gave a low moan as he tried to get free, but he had no leverage and the restraints stayed in place.

Clint snatched up a towel, holding it to the wound and making Scott cry out. “I need to stop the bleeding,” Clint explained, not harshly. “Scott. Hey. Open your eyes a sec.”

It took Scott a couple of seconds, but eventually he managed to open his eyes and fix them on Clint.

“Good. Stay with me. You’re going to be fine, ok?”

“I’m…yeah. Ok.” Scott tugged on his wrists, the movement involuntary. “You need to go…Kilgrave, he…”

“As soon as you get help. We’ll get him, don’t worry.”

“You…” Scott sucked in a breath, face crumpling with pain. “ And you…” He moved his gaze from Clint to Bucky. “Not you.”

Bucky wasn’t following, but Clint seemed to pick up his meaning. “Yeah. He can’t control us. So we’ll _get_ him.”

That seemed to be all Scott needed to hear, because he nodded once, then shut his eyes again, breath hitching.

Clint pressed harder against the wound, in a fruitless attempt to stop the bleeding. “How far away is help, Fri?”

_“Two minutes.”_

“Does he have two minutes?” Bucky mouthed, not letting Scott hear.

“He’d better.” Clint fully looked at him for the first time, running his eyes over him in assessment. “You ok?”

Bucky nodded. “You?”

“Fine.”

“An explanation wouldn’t be amiss.”

“For you and me both.” Clint shifted to get a better angle on Scott, moving the soaked towel.

“You know more than me. Give me the TL;DR version.”

Clint’s eyebrows quirked at that, surprised.

“What? I read.”

Clint didn’t waste time. “Kevin Thompson, alias Kilgrave which, as far as subtle villain names go, gets a negative ten. Was put away on the Raft for mind control, emphasis on the _was._ ”

“Mind control.” Bucky looked around the unconscious Avengers, swallowing. He’d guessed as much, but having it confirmed sent his stomach plunging. “But not on us. He can’t control us.”

“Apparently not. And according to his lovesick ranting, we’re not the first, but we’re the minority. He’s trying to get Bruce to do something to make him stronger, to overcome that, with my blood.”

Bucky recalled the vial of blood Kilgrave had taken with him. “That was yours?”

Clint grimaced. “Yeah. Which is going to help him, somehow, I guess.”

“We’ll stop him.”

“Obviously. As soon as Scott is in safe hands, we’re taking him out. Speaking of.”

The door to the lab swung open, several medics approaching.

“About time,” Clint got out, just as the closest medic produced a gun from their waistband and fired.

***

To say Clint was used to close calls was an understatement. In fact, he got antsier now when they _didn’t_ happen. But the near heart attack he’d had at seeing Bucky throw himself right into the purple-suited lion’s den definitely cracked the top ten.

At least Bucky seemed to have some idea of the stakes, because the first thing Clint saw when the lights came up was the blender chord in the super-soldier's hand.

That was enough for him. He threw himself at Sam, the situation too urgent to be gentle as he locked one arm around his friend’s neck and used the other to scrabble for the vial of blood in Sam’s fist. Sam wasn’t letting go, fighting back with everything he had to get over to Bruce. Clint held on stubbornly, even as Sam managed to land a sharp elbow in his ribs.

“Bucky, run!” Even as he yelled it, Clint knew Bucky wouldn’t. He’d fight until Kilgrave stopped him, and Clint might have had the slimmest chance of taking on the other four on his own, but Bucky bested him two times out of three in hand-to-hand, and that was when he wasn’t aiming to do damage. Even if Clint could exploit that injury Bucky had been trying to hide earlier, and Bruce was too injured to put up a fight, he still had Sam and Maria and Scott to deal with.

But Clint had lived a life of impossible odds, and somehow he was still here, so screw it if he wasn’t going to at least try. Starting by evening those odds out in any way he could.

He pressed harder on Sam’s neck, pushing down his disgust at the action as he heard Sam gasp for air, aiming to knock him out and then go for Maria and do the same. Maybe if he was up against just an injured Bucky and Scott, then maybe, just maybe he could -

_“STOP!”_

Clint pressed harder, willing Sam to pass out already, but the pararescue had managed to snake one hand in between Clint’s arm and his windpipe, giving himself of a pocket of air as Clint yelled, knowing it was pointless, “Dammit Barnes, run!”

“Good,” he heard Kilgrave say, heart-stopping, making a silent promise to take Bucky out before he did damage to anyone. Maybe he could get to him before the command was spoken. If there was any chance of getting his friend back from a second mind control experience, Clint would make it happen. 

Clint was seconds away from releasing Sam and going for Bucky instead, when Kilgrave spoke gain.

“No, that’s one too many. Get out.”

Relief flooded him. Kilgrave wasn’t going to make Bucky hurt anyone, at least. Just send him away, and make him forget, and… put Clint right back where he’d started. The short-term relief vanished. He risked a glance at Bucky, who had Maria restrained, confusion in his features.

“That means _now.”_

Still Bucky didn’t move.

“Son of a bitch,” Clint laughed, releasing a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding when the order came.

“Cut out your own hearts.”

Clint’s hands were wet with Scott’s blood as the first medic pulled their gun, and he lunged forward to push the gun towards the ceiling as the first shot was fired. The others pulled weapons soon after, but they were medics, not fighters, and in a normal situation they would have been easy to disarm and pin down.

This was not a normal situation.

The attackers came at them with no sense of self-perseveration, leaving openings a mile wide, but Clint was going to incapacitate; they were going to kill. Clint cared about collateral damage; they didn’t. Said collateral damage being the two teammates they’d just tied up and the third lying prone and vulnerable on the floor.

He disarmed the first man and used the gun to knock him out before dodging the bullet of the second, throwing the two medics into one another before tackling the third, aware of Bucky taking on the other four. Clint knocked out the one underneath him before a sixth sense whispered that a gun was pointed his way and he rolled, taking the unconscious body with him so neither of them would get hit. He didn’t notice until they stopped that he had landed right in front of Sam, the medic raising his gun to take another shot.

Clint had a split second to choose. He could take the bullet, or he could dodge and let Sam take it instead.

Clint gritted his teeth and waited for the shot to hit.

The resulting bang threw all of Clint’s survival instincts into overdrive, but he willed himself to stay where he was just as there were a blur and a hot pain spiked in his arm. He forced himself to ignore it, looking away from where Bucky had tackled Clint’s would-be killer to the ground.

Clint had just knocked out the last of them when he heard a yelp of pain from behind him, and turned to see Bucky lying on the floor next to Scott, hand clasped to his side as his shirt turned wet.

Clint swore as he skidded across the room, landing between his two injured teammates, ignoring the flare-up of his own injury. He glanced down, determining that it was just a flesh wound; it could wait. Which presented him with his next awful choice. Scott or Bucky.

Sparing one last glance at Bucky’s ruined shirt, Clint bit out, “You need to deal with that yourself,” before turning back to Scott, running through options. He didn’t dare call more medical help, but he didn’t have the skills to deal with an injury of this magnitude himself. And all the while Kilgrave was getting further away with Bruce and Clint’s blood.

Just as he was debating the best path, there was a groan behind him and he saw Sam raise his head, eyes unfocused as he pulled at the bindings. “I need to -”

“Cut out your heart, I know." Clint reapplied pressure to Scott’s wounds, feeling felt hot liquid drip down his arm. Cursing, he pulled back, ripping off his t-shirt and tightening it around the wound to stop his blood mingling with Scott’s.

Sam continued to struggle, but it was weak. Clint felt a pang when he noted the bruising springing up around Sam’s throat, making his voice rough and hoarse. “Ok. What the hell?”

“Excellent question,” Clint replied, watching out of the corner of his eye as Bucky struggled to his knees, turning away from Clint to pull up his shirt. Had he been shot?

Panic at the sheer amount of hurt, missing or captured teammates threatened to overwhelm him, but he forced it back. He didn’t have time for that, and neither did anyone else. He’d get to all of them. There wasn’t another option.

Sam continued to pull on the chord, but his eyes were on Scott, who had chosen that moment to flutter open his eyes again, taking in the unconscious medics. “You need to suture him, or he’s going to bleed out. I’d do it, but…”

“I got it.” Clint hurried over to the pile of abandoned medical equipment leftover from treating Bruce, aware of Sam sending reassuring words Scott’s way. He didn’t bother to pick and choose, just grabbing all of it and dumping it between Scott and Bucky, who wasn’t facing him. “Hey. You shot?”

“Not shot,” Bucky grunted back. “Focus on Lang.” He grabbed a towel and pressed it into his side, and Clint swallowed when he saw how quickly it turned red.

“I’m going to take care of Scott, then I’ll help. Ok?”

Bucky waved him off. “I can do it myself.” He looked back over at the equipment Clint had snagged, eyeing a skin stapler. “That’ll do. Unless you need it.”

Clint raised an eyebrow at Sam, questioning. Sam hesitated before reluctantly saying, “The wound’s too messy. You’ll need to sew. I know it’ll take longer but -”

“But it needs to be done. Got it.”

Clint pushed the stapler to Bucky, who picked it up as though to move away. “Don’t you dare,” Clint growled at him. “If you’re performing surgery on yourself, you can at least stay in my goddamn eyeline.”

“Not surgery,” Bucky retorted. “And I got it.” 

“Clint's right,” Sam cut in, as Clint dumped disinfectant on his hands before pulling on a pair of gloves, ignoring how pale Scott had gone, eyes deliberately focussed anywhere except on what Clint was doing. “And Bruce doesn’t have time for you to argue - none of us do.”

Bucky took that in, then gritted his teeth and gave in, tugging off his shirt and revealing the injury he’d been hiding.

The room went completely still. “Fuck, Barnes,” Sam breathed, echoing Clint’s thoughts.

A ragged cut was laced up Bucky’s side, stitched together so haphazardly that Clint had no doubt that the former assassin had done it himself. Several of the stitches had split in the altercation with the medics, leaking a clear liquid down Bucky’s side. The skin around it was red and inflamed, oozing pus from a handful of the holes the stitches had left.

Clint swallowed, guilt clouding him. Bucky had to have been hiding this for days for the wound to have gotten so infected, and he’d only noticed this morning?

Bucky held out a hand. “Disinfectant?”

Clint threw it to him, still searching for words, as Bucky cleaned his hands and then dumped a squirt of it down the wound with a hiss before throwing the bottle back. Without hesitating, he started tugging out the scraps of thread, more of the clear liquid blossoming from the wound with each pull.

Never more grateful for the strong stomach that came from an alcoholic father and adolescence in a circus, Clint found his voice. “Hey, Sam? Are there painkillers in this mix?

Sam grimaced. “Not enough for both of you. And they won’t work on Barnes.”

Bucky waved that off, picking up the skin stapler and, stomach of iron or not, Clint did not need to see that. He concentrated on locating the near-empty bottle of pills instead, guiding Scott’s head up with his other hand. “Hey, Lang. You in there?”

“I guess,” Scott mumbled, skin turning from white to green at the movement. “Kind of wish I wasn’t though.”

“Take these.” Clint helped them into his teammate’s mouth before realizing he had no water to offer to wash them down with. “Dry swallow only, sorry.”

Scott choked them down, Clint making sure they weren’t stuck in his throat as he prepared the disinfectant. “Are you going to pass out again? Because I’d recommend that.”

“I can try. Also, I think I’ve gone off smoothies. Like, for life. Which is a shame, because Cassie makes this blitz thing out of maple syrup and banana and -”

The rambling cut off with a blood-chilling scream as Clint wiped the disinfectant over the open wound.“Ok, Scott? I’m going to sew you closed now.”

Silent tears were slipping down Scott’s cheeks, but he nodded, indicating with his bound hands for Clint to go ahead. 

It was far from the first time Clint had stitched a wound closed, but it was the deepest and the messiest, and would need to be reopened for proper surgery later. Under Sam’s instruction, Clint did the best he could, finally pulling the last stitch closed and grabbing the remaining bandages.

The whole thing took far longer than Clint was comfortable with, but he forced himself to go slow and to focus, knowing it would just take longer if he rushed and ended up doing more damage. By the time he was finished, Bucky had replaced his shirt and dropped to Scott’s side, tilting his head up offer him water before going to Sam and doing the same.

Scott’s bloodshot eyes found Clint’s. “You have to…”

“I know,” Clint assured him. “We’ll get him.”

Scott nodded, then added, “Why you…and Barnes...not?”

Clint looked over at Bucky, who was checking on Maria’s breathing. “I don’t know.”

Scott hummed, then, “Chickens.”

“What?”

Clint’s mind was already racing towards thoughts of blood loss or painkiller overdose when Scott amended. “Chickenpox.”

“What’s he on about?” Bucky asked, sweeping his hands over the floor, checking that no more sharp objects were anywhere in reach.

“Chickenpox,” Clint clarified. “You only get it once, then you’re immune.” He caught on. “We’ve both been brainwashed before. Like inoculation."

Bucky considered that. "Like immunity?"

"That’s what Kilgrave wants Bruce for," Clint continued. "He wants to get stronger. Like a virus mutating."

“Sorry.” They all looked over at Sam, who was looking guilty even as he continued to pull at the bindings. Bucky checked behind them, his eyes widening as he swore and looked around the lab, settling on one of Bruce’s spare lab coats and going to retrieve it. “I gave him your blood. I tried to stop, but…I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

Bucky returned with the coat, using his teeth to rip off a sleeve. Angling his head, Clint could see that Sam’s wrists were already red and raw from trying to free himself. Bucky worked the material under the cable, tying it around Sam’s hands to prevent further damage. “It wasn’t your fault,” Bucky assured him, but his eyes were on Clint. “It wasn’t you.”

Clint recognized the apology for the words spoken earlier, even if they hadn’t needed one. Bucky continued tearing the lab coat into strips, using it to tie up the unconscious medics, pulling them away from the door as Clint wound a strip of cloth around Maria’s wrists, winding it over her fingers like he had Scott’s so she wouldn’t be able to unpick the knots when she came to.

“What did he mean backup?” Bucky asked. “He told Bruce to bring him to the backup.”

Clint nudged Scott, who was fighting to stay conscious, despite the pain. “Scott? You’ve been here longest. Do you know?”

“Another lab…” Scott mumbled. “Dunno which one. Was a…continent. No. Words.”

“Contingency?” Clint pressed.

“That sounds like a word.”

“Anything else we need to know?”

“Did something to F.R.I.D.A.Y.”

“The only person who can do anything to F.R.I.D.A.Y. is Tony.” Which had all sorts of implications Clint would rather not consider. “Do you know where Tony is?”

Scott shook his head.

“Fine. Find Tony. On the to-do list."

“Can I…tired.”

Clint raised his eyebrows at Sam.

“Try to stay awake,” Sam prompted, looking like he was struggling to do so himself. “I’m sorry, I know it hurts.”

Bucky had finished with the medics, stuffing one of their guns into his waistband and snatching up another one. “We doing this?”

Clint nodded, arming himself as well. “We’ll be back,” he promised the others. “We’ll get him, ok?”

“You’d better,” Sam replied.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.? Can you lock the lab behind us?”

_“I can, Mr Barton._ ”

With one last look at their teammates, Clint and Bucky made their way out into the hall. "Bruce's other lab is up a floor," Clint said, guiding them to the elevator, relieved when they didn’t come across any more resistance. Once the doors were closing, Clint glanced down at Bucky’s side. “How is it?”

“Holding. You?” He indicated Clint’s arm.

“Tis but a scratch.”

“Did you just say _’tis?’_ ”

Clint managed a small smile. “Oh, do I have a movie to show you when this is over." He glanced down at himself, now dressed in a tank top since his shirt was being used as a bandage. He recalled the ceiling vent use earlier. "Actually, two movies. And it really is just a scratch, thanks to you.”

Bucky shrugged it off. “I have your back.”

“I know you do.” The elevator arrived at the floor, but Clint pressed the button to keep the doors closed. “This guy. He’s smart. He plans. He had a backup lab; he’d told the others to protect him if someone attacked before I even arrived. He knew we'd call medics - he was prepared for that."

“And you think he’s going to have a contingency now?”

“Definitely.”

“He has Banner.”

Clint considered that. “He needs him. I think it’s going to be something else.”

“You think it’s going to be more innocents out there for us to fight.”

“Yeah,” Clint admitted. “Yeah, I do. Or something worse. We were in the other lab for some time; he had the opportunity to throw more barriers between us and him. We have to assume he took it.”

Bucky exhaled. “But he can’t control us. Unless…”

“Unless Bruce figures that out before we get there. Yes. Listen.” Clint turned to face him fully. “I can do this.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”

“I meant, _I_ can do this.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in, and when they did, Bucky glared at him. “You’d really think I’d ditch you, Barton?”

“You’re hurt,” Clint said bluntly. “Worse than you told me. And if Bruce has already figured out a way to overcome the immunity, and he can get in our heads I completely understand if you -”

“Clint, I say this with as much respect as possible. Fuck off, so we can go do our jobs.”

And _that_ was just…not the time to be thinking about that kind of thing.

“Fair enough.” Ignoring that his heart was beating faster from more than just adrenaline, Clint went to open the elevator, pausing before he did so. “Although it wouldn’t be the worst idea to have a contingency of our own.”

He’d barely finished when, without warning, a metal hand thrust through the doors, quickly joined by a second.

Clint scrambled backward, both him and Bucky readying their weapons, knowing it was no good as the doors were torn open and Clint found himself looking straight down the barrel of Iron Man’s repulsor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hi Tony.
> 
> TL;DR = Too long, didn't read.
> 
> And bonus points if you can name the two movies Clint was talking about.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your well-wishes for the new job! You are all too kind x
> 
> Managed to finish this chapter a bit earlier than I thought when I got trapped on a train because the tracks were struck by lightning. Maybe Thor just really wanted to see what happened next.

At the first groan of straining metal, Bucky was back in Siberia, watching the doors to a cold Hydra base being forced open to reveal an expressionless, metal mask.

“Steve, get down!”

He threw himself sideways, tackling the blond man to his left just as a wave of heat filled the elevator. The sound split his eardrums as he collapsed to the floor, but then there were arms around him, tugging him up and pulling him towards the danger- 

Bucky had a second to protest before he was being shoved through a tiny gap between the elevator and the suit of armor that had come to kill them. He rolled with the movement, springing to his feet and preparing to fight even though how could he fight _this_ he had no idea -

There was a shout to his left and then he saw his companion get pulled backward, a blur of silver arms wrapping around his waist and neck, as -

_“Barnes!”_

Clint. That was Clint. Not Steve. Not Siberia. Steve was safe. And Clint was being hauled backward down the corridor by War Machine, cursing as he started working through every trick in his arsenal to try and scramble free.

Bucky was a second from going to his rescue when a metal hand clamped down on his shoulder.

He didn’t have time to think about it. It was pure instinct as he swung around and fired.

The bullet pinged harmlessly off the armor's faceplate, threatening more damage from a ricochet than to its target, so Bucky dropped the gun and went in with his fist instead, going straight for the glowing reactor at the suit’s core.

Pain lanced up his injured side into an arm that wasn’t there, his remaining hand scrabbling for the edges in the reactor. He found none. It melted smoothly into the metal around it, giving him no purchase as he heard a repulser fire up, ready to shoot.

The sound was enough to shatter every half-truth he’d been telling himself since he’d been taken from Wakanda.

Half-truths such as that Bucky had been giving Stark his space. That he had wanted the man he had taken so much from to feel comfortable in his own home. That he hadn’t wanted to cause more pain.

He also hadn’t wanted to _receive_ more pain.

He knew, when he took the time to reason through it logically, that it wouldn’t come to that. He had seen how hard Stark had been working on the Accords. He knew that Steve wouldn’t have let them anywhere near each other if he wasn’t certain another death match was completely off the table. He knew that Stark’s actions in Siberia had been caused by grief; an old wound ripped open that the man hadn’t had time to react to beyond taking out the first source of the pain he could reach.

None of that logic helped on the nights Bucky woke drenched in sweat, teeth clamped in the pillow to prevent himself from yelling as the phantom pains wracked the left side of his body. The metal arm had been more than a tool. It had had sensor plates, feeling, sensation. It had been designed that way so he would feel when it was damaged, like any other part of his body, so he could alert his handlers when he needed maintenance. And even though Clint had told him to stop using that word, it was what it had been. Maintenance. Breaking and repairing, over and over and over again.

He’d never told Steve how much losing the arm had hurt. There had been so much pain caused that day, he hadn’t wanted to add to it. But T’Challa had seen, removing what had remained of the arm and detaching the fried wiring from his nervous system, piece by piece, while Steve was unconscious on the plane.

Both T’Challa and Shuri had both understood his reluctance to take on a new arm after that.

_ ”Clint!” _

Bucky got no response. The heat from the repulser was gathering, the blast about to strike, and there was nothing he could do except get out of the way.

Even with his reflexes, Bucky wasn’t fast enough. Heat burned up his uninjured side, searing through his shirt into his skin and knocking him back towards the elevators.

Bucky risked a look over Stark’s shoulder, enough to gather that Clint was no longer in sight as Stark prepared to fire at him again.

He was going to die. Bucky couldn’t kid himself that he’d win, not without backup, not without weapons, not without the arm. It was the same feeling that had gripped him the second Stark had looked at him after Zemo had played the video. When he’d seen the pain there, of what he’d done. Of what he’d been a part of taking away. Of what he was about to take away from Steve.

And even through all of that, his first thought had been, _I want to live._

He had hated himself for it later. He should have died in 1945, fighting for his country. That should have been the end - before the pain, before the suffering on all sides. He’d tried to atone, to convince Steve to shoot him before he could cause more damage, but of course Steve hadn’t listened. He’d chosen Bucky. Again.

And it nearly cost them both everything.

The blasts weren’t easy to weave around, and Bucky found himself grateful that the Compound had wide corridors as he rolled under another hit from the repulser, knowing he was only delaying the inevitable.

He had no idea how to fight this suit of impenetrable armor that was rapidly approaching him, edging him closer and closer towards the elevator, away from the lab at the end of the corridor.

Away from where Rhodes had taken Clint - most likely straight to Kilgrave.

Bucky found a new surge of energy, lunging for one of the gauntlets before Stark could fire again. The metal was searing hot, burning his palm, but Bucky gritted his teeth and twisted anyway, looking for any weakness he could exploit.

There was none. The metal bent under his grip but mended itself in the next second, thousands of particles melting back together as Stark’s free arm gripped him by the jaw before throwing him the length of the corridor.

Bucky just managed to get his arm under him in time to prevent a head injury, but even as he tried to scramble upwards, he felt something cold and hard slam around his ankles, locking them in place.

He twisted in the bonds, trying to bring his knees up to him so he could tug and pull at the thick metal band, but it wasn’t giving, the restraint seeming to have glued itself to the floor. He wrenched at it, trying to break the metal or worm his way out, but both were impossible as the dreaded repulser was raised once more, pointing right at his chest, and Bucky knew his time was up.

The last thing Bucky saw before the repulser fired was the expressionless Iron Man mask staring down at him.

He wished he felt relieved. He wished he didn’t feel scared.

Neither wish was granted.

There was a wave of searing heat, and he heard the groan of an elevator behind him before registering with a flood of emotion and adrenaline that he wasn’t dead. A flesh arm had wrapped itself around Stark’s neck as a familiar voice yelled. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.! Code Cuckoo, now!”

The Iron Man armor jerked back as the hand reached down to clutch the reactor-like triangle on Stark’s chest, the device coming away easily as the metal seemed to melt onto the body behind it. Bucky just caught a glimpse of Clint’s bloodied face before it was encased in nanotech before he was dropping to his side to rip the cuff off Bucky’s ankles.

Stark tumbled to the ground as the sounds of metal filled the corridor, and both Bucky and Clint turned to see Rhodes approaching - fast. “ Get Tony!” Clint yelled, his voice tinny behind the Iron Man mask. He stumbled to his feet, still getting used to the suit as Stark rolled over with a groan. For a second, it looked like he was going to pass out. Then his body snapped upright as though by invisible strings and he threw himself at Bucky.

Apparently whatever command Kilgrave had put in Stark’s head hadn’t ended when the suit was removed, because he went for straight for Bucky’s throat. Bucky easily stopped him, knocking aside his outstretched hand and pulling him flush against him in a headlock, scrambling back so he could brace them both against the wall.

Stark’s struggles didn’t cease for a moment as he bucked and writhed to get free, hitting Bucky’s nostrils with the overpowering scents of metal and sweat. Bucky didn’t want to consider how long Kilgrave had locked Stark in that suit for, guarding whatever backup plan he had had in place. 

Stark tried to elbow Bucky in the ribs, but couldn’t get enough space between them to have the leverage for any real damage, so he went back to scrabbling at Bucky’s arm instead. A low moan echoed behind his lips, the sound mirroring every bit of fear in Bucky’s own pounding heart.

Clint was still fighting Rhodes, although he clearly had little, if any, experience working the suit. His saving grace was that Rhodes seemed to have been instructed to capture, not kill. That slight upper hand was enough for Clint to fumble for something in the suit a split second before a shockwave rocked the entire corridor. The War Machine suit froze in place before tumbling backward, slamming into the ground with a deafening clang.

Stark gave another muffled shout as he fought harder, Bucky guessed under orders from Kilgrave not to open his mouth. His struggles doubled as Clint leaned over Rhodes, searching the suit. It didn’t make a difference to how hard Stark fought. Even one-armed, Bucky was stronger.

He felt heat run through him, realizing that only minutes ago their positions had been reversed, with Stark being the stronger of the two and Bucky trying to get away from _him_ in terror. He found his voice. “It’s ok,” he said, keeping his tone low. “I’m not going to hurt you. Or your friend.”

The words seemed to fall on deaf ears, Stark almost managing to slip free. Bucky caught him and pulled him back, even as felt Stark’s breath catch short under his grip.

The suit melted away from Clint as he pulled the reactor-like device from his chest, then used his bare hands to finally locate the release on Rhodes’s suit. Whatever he’d unleashed only seemed to have stopped the suit, not the man. The second the armor opened, Rhodes was out of it and lunging for Clint.

Clint seemed to have anticipated it, because he was ready, catching Rhodes and spinning him around in a mirror image to how Bucky was holding Stark. Rhodes’s eyes were squeezed shut, squirming in Clint’s grip as the archer began to press down. Stark as he became a live-wire in Bucky’s arms, desperate to get free.

“Tony,” Clint called from across the room. “We’re going to knock you both out. That’s all. You’re both going to be fine.”

Stark choked on the next shout as Rhodes’s eyes began to flutter, before starting to slacken in Clint’s grip. Bucky felt locked in place. He knew he should be doing the same to Stark, that they were on a deadline, that every second they wasted here was another second Kilgrave was closer to overcoming their immunity. He knew how to safely knock someone out, that Stark would be fine, that this was probably the kinder option anyway. He should do it. It was the best option for everyone.

Even as he willed himself move, he remembered the ghost of a metal arm locking around his own throat, pulling him close, hissing in his ear.

_Do you ever remember them?_

_I remember all of them._

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t press down, squeeze the life out of someone until they went still. 

He couldn’t constrict Tony’s throat like he’d done to his mother.

Rhodes finally went boneless under Clint’s grip. Clint held on a couple of seconds longer to be sure, then finally released his teammate and dashed to Bucky’s side. A quick glance over them, and Clint had figured out their predicament.

“Tony,” Clint said, his voice low. “Bucky’s going to let go, and then I’m going to grab you and knock you out, and then we’re going to go save Bruce. I know you’re going to resist because you have to, but when you wake up everyone is going to be fine, alright? I promise.”

Stark replied with a muffled sound of protest, the struggles not lessening.

“Whatever Kilgrave did to you, he can’t do to us,” Clint assured him. “We’re immune. We’ll take him out, alright?” He turned his attention to Barnes. “Let go.”

Bucky had never been happier to follow an instruction in his life. He released Stark into Clint’s waiting arms, who caught the mechanic even as he made a new bid for freedom, expertly cutting off his airway as Bucky scrambled backward, wanting to put as much distance between him and Stark as possible. He could still smell the man’s sweat on him as he started to go lax in Clint’s arms, with no way to wipe it off.

“Get Rhodes,” Clint instructed, maneuvering the now unconscious Stark over his shoulder, wincing as the movement pulled at his injured arm.

Rhodes wasn’t easy to get over his shoulder with only the one arm and the added weight of the Colonel’s braces, but Bucky wasn’t about to drag the unconscious man down the corridor either. He made do, looking down at the abandoned War Machine suit. “What did you do?”

“EMP,” Clint explained. “Shuts the suit down until it can only be opened manually. Tony’s had one installed ever since Hammer got control of Rhodey’s suit at the Stark Expo. Good story,” he added, stopping by a cupboard up the corridor. “I’ll tell it to you some time.”

Bucky’s stomach twisted a little as Clint shifted Stark’s weight to open the cupboard. It wasn’t that different from the one they had found Peter in. That felt like a week ago - had it really only been a few hours?

They settled the two men against each other, Clint expertly winding an extension cord around their wrists and ankles before finishing it off with a loop around both their chests and knees, binding them together. As a finishing touch, he prompted Bucky to snap off the door handle in the inside of the cupboard.

“They’re going to be ok?” Bucky asked as Clint closed the door behind him, locking them in.

“A few bruises, but they’ll be fine.” Clint gave him a once over. “You? Don’t lie.”

Bucky grimaced as he pulled his shirt up. The staples had held, just, but the fight had wrenched and pulled at the skin, sending new waves of blood and pus down his side, mirrored by repulser burns on the other. A similar burning was pulsing through his palm from where he had grabbed the gauntlet. “There’s nothing you can do,” he said shortly, as Clint went to examine the injuries. “It’ll be fine. Until the fight is done,” he amended quickly, sensing the protest before Clint voiced it. “Then I’ll get it looked at properly.” He changed the subject. “You?”

Clint wiped the residue from his bloody nose on his wrist, rubbing at the bruises on his neck from where Rhodes had pulled him down the corridor. “I’ll live.”

“How did you get away?”

“Because I’m paranoid as fuck, and there isn’t a single person on this team who knows all my tricks. Except Nat,” he amended.

“Rhodes didn’t try to kill you.”

Clint confirmed it as he headed back to the elevator to retrieve their dropped weapons, Bucky following suit. “He was trying to drag me to the lab. Which I’m guessing means -”

“Kilgrave isn’t done with your DNA. He needs you.”

“Well, doesn’t that make me feel special.” Clint checked both guns, looking around the walls of the scorched elevator. “Although I’m guessing that he only needs one of us.”

Bucky absorbed himself in checking his weapons, even though he knew they were already functional. When he looked up, he saw Clint watching him, wary.

“I’m fine,” he bit out. “So stop watching me like you’re waiting for me to break.

“Are you?”

Bucky rewarded that with a glare that didn’t deter Clint for a second.

“He would have killed you,” Clint said quietly. “You didn’t have a choice.”

Bucky shrugged that off, Clint misreading the gesture.

“You did you what you had to do,” the archer amended quickly. “Not that you had no choice. Sorry. Bad phrasing.”

“No, that’s not -” Bucky shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We have to get to Kilgrave.”

“Take a breath,” Clint slowed him. “Clear your head, because you’re going to need one for both of us to get through this. What’s going on?”

Bucky bit his lip, but relented. Clint was right; he couldn’t go into the battle with his head clouded.  “I know I didn’t have a choice. Stark would have killed me, Rhodes probably would have taken you. So I fought. I know that.”

“But?”

“But…but I did have a choice. The _first_ time.”

It took a second for Clint to cotton on to what he meant. When he did, Bucky realized it was the first time he’d seen Clint horrified at something he’d said - and he’d told him a lot of awful things.  “Bucky -”

“I didn’t _have_ to fight back,” Bucky insisted, and then the dam was broken, and all the thoughts he hadn’t let himself have for months came tumbling out. “I didn’t. I ran. I left Steve and I _ran,_ and when Stark pulled me back I let him have it. And I can pretend it was for Steve or because I wanted the chance to redeem myself or whatever, but really? I just didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die and someone else got hurt so that I could live then-”

“Stop.” Suddenly Clint’s hands were on his shoulders; a comforting, grounding weight. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were attacked. You defended yourself.”

“I attacked _back.”_ Bucky felt Stark’s weight back against his chest, bucking uselessly to try and break free, heart pounding with fright. “When…Stark has this,” he gestured to the Compound walls. “And a life, and _a_ _kid,_ and I have _nothing._ I just cause more problems and damage and -”

“And what?” Clint prompted. “And still you don’t want to die?”

Slowly, Bucky nodded, feeling the shame in it.

Clint slipped a hand from Bucky’s shoulder to his elbow, grasping it. “Good.”

_“Good?_ How is that _good?”_  
  
“I want to be in the field with you,” Clint insisted. “Not yet - current circumstances excluded - but when you’re ready. I want you to have my back. And sometimes the best way of protecting the people you love is protecting yourself.”

_Love?_ Bucky swallowed, pushing past it. Wishful thinking would get him nowhere.

“And, Bucky, please hear me out on this. You deserve a life. You deserve to be alive, and you deserve to fight for that right. And more than that, you deserve to be happy. And you don’t have nothing. I know you and Steve haven’t been great lately, but you’ll always have him, you know that.”

Bucky shifted, uncomfortable, hoping Clint wouldn’t catch him out in the lie as he said, “Yeah. I know that.”

“I’m not pulling an inspirational speech out of my ass here,” Clint went on. “You’re getting this secondhand. But that doesn’t mean I’m not right.”

“Do you mean…are you talking about Natasha?”

Clint blinked, surprised, then course-corrected. “I guess a little bit. She got it second-hand too, though. And maybe first-hand from the source. I never asked.”

“The source?”

Clint gave him a sad smile. “I’m passing on words that were given to me, that changed everything for me, when I probably didn’t deserve them. And I know it takes a while, and there are slip-ups, and there will _always_ be slip-ups, but it does get better. If you have people around that care enough about you to keep trying, even when you think they’d be better off not bothering.” The hand on Bucky’s elbow tightened. “And even though the person I’m plagiarising extremely heavily right now isn’t around anymore, I still have Natasha, and you still have Steve. And…and me.” Bucky didn’t miss the hesitation before the last word, but refused to read into it before Clint added quietly, “If you wanted that.”

Bucky didn’t get the chance to answer, as F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice suddenly filled the elevator, startling them both. _“Mr Barton and Mr Barnes. Mr Kilgrave is requesting your presence."_

Clint and Bucky exchanged a look, weighing the unspoken threat. “Is he going to hurt Banner if we don’t go?” Bucky asked finally.

“He needs him,” Clint countered. “Rhodey tried to drag me off, not kill me. He’s not done.”

“He’s going to have a failsafe,” Bucky replied, looking down the corridor at the marks of the fight. “Maybe more than one.” 

_“He is requesting your presence now,”_ F.R.I.D.A.Y. added, and Bucky was sure he wasn’t imagining the nervousness in the AI’s voice. “ _He says you won’t like the consequences if you disobey.”_

“He has someone,” Clint said, mirroring Bucky’s thoughts. “Of course he has someone. He had a whole building full of leverage the second he walked in here.”

“Then we have to go,” Bucky decided.  
  
“Yeah, I know.”

They made their way down the corridor, pausing outside the lab door. This one appeared smaller than the last, although the windows were blacked out in the same manner.

_“The door is unlocked,”_ F.R.I.D.A.Y. prompted them.

“Hey.” Clint turned to Bucky, not a trace of fear showing. Just steady determination. “You have my back. Right?”

Bucky knew what he was really asking. Have his back. He couldn’t do that if he was dead. “Yeah. I have your back.”

“Ok.” Like it was that simple. “Let’s go kick this dickwad’s ass.”

Clint opened the door, allowing them both to step inside, taking in the scene around them. 

Banner was hunched over a workbench, head bowed but seemingly unhurt except for his bandaged shoulder. Kilgrave was to his right, chomping on an apple and smirking up at them as they entered.

Bucky hardly spared either of them a glance. His eyes, like Clint’s, were fixed on the center of the room, his head spinning as the floor felt like it was falling away.

Steve. Kilgrave had Steve.

Natasha as well.

Their two respective best friends stood a yard away from each other, each of them holding a gun to the other’s head.

“Finally.” Kilgrave beckoned them both into the room. “Come on in, don’t be shy.”

Weapons not lowering, Bucky followed Clint into the room, eyes locked onto Steve’s frozen form, then flinching when Kilgrave clapped his hands together, grinning over at both of them. “Took you long enough, so answer my next question quickly. Which one of you is going to let me drain their blood?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Hey, writer's brain? You can't-  
> Writer's brain: Do it.  
> Me: I really don't think -  
> Writer's brain: DO IT.  
> Me: YOU CAN'T WHUMP EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IN ONE FIC.  
> Writer's brain: *evil chuckling*


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to the lovely Justanotherpuff - Happy Birthday!
> 
> TWs: Some brief non-con stuff, a blink and you'll miss it reference to self-harm

“Drop your weapons. Leave them outside the door.”

Reluctantly, Bucky lowered his gun before pulling the other from his belt, sliding them both across the floor. Clint was doing the same, eyes fixed resolutely on the ground.

“Step inside, kneel in the middle of the room. Chop chop,” Kilgrave added when they both hesitated. Then, when they were still too slow, _“MOVE!”_

They did as they were told, Bucky risking a look over at Steve and Natasha as he lowered himself to his knees. Clint crouched at his side a second later, still looking down but positioning himself so he could still see both Bucky and Bruce in his peripherals. His shoulders were ramrod straight with tension, fingers laced together so tightly that the knuckles were bone white.

“I gave Stark _one_ job.” Kilgrave settled back into his chair, swinging his legs up onto one of Bruce’s workbenches. “Bring one of you here, take care of the other. Surely that wouldn’t be so hard, right?” He sunk his teeth into the apple, spraying juice. “But no, you had to go and bollocks this up, _again._ ” He gestured at Steve and Natasha, digging gun barrels into each other’s foreheads. “I didn’t have to do this. I was all for doing it the easy way, but then _you_ forced my hand. Now.” He used the half-eaten apple to gesture at Bruce. “Which one of them is better?”

Bruce’s eyes darted between Clint and Bucky, apology written all over his body language. “Either. I just need more blood than what we took the first time.”

“Fine. Pick one and get on with it."

Clint didn’t react beyond darting a quick look at Steve and Natasha. Bucky noted that Bruce did the same, although his gaze lingered. Someone in this room was about to get hurt. It didn’t take a genius to see who it should be.

“Use me.”

Clint’s head swung around, deliberately keeping Kilgrave out of his line of sight as he glared at Bucky, a clear _Don’t you dare_ behind the look.

Neither Steve nor Natasha had moved - couldn’t move - but Bucky had heard Steve’s breath pick up at his words. Bucky focussed in on Clint instead. “I have your back.”

The tension in Clint’s shoulders didn’t lessen a fraction, but he nodded, just slightly. Agreeing to the plan. Showing him trust.

The feeling sent a wave of warmth through Bucky despite the situation, even as Bruce made his way over to him with equipment in hand. Clint trusted him. He was letting him do this. He was letting him make this choice, for both of them, for their friends. He was letting him be in control.

Bucky tried and failed not to flinch as he felt a warm hand on his arm, looking for a vein. “Sorry,” he heard Bruce whisper under his breath. “I need…I need a lot.”

Bucky glanced at Clint again. “It’s fine. I can take it.”

“Shut up,” Kilgrave ordered him. “Just…shut up, for once. No one ever just _shuts up.”_

_Yeah,_ Bucky aimed at Kilgrave. _I know the feeling._

This time, Bucky managed not to flinch as he felt the prick of the needle. He could feel Steve’s eyes on him, watching the blood being drained away. He chose to keep his eyes on Kilgrave instead as he tossed the apple core away, scattering across the floor into Clint’s knee. The archer grimaced but made no move to push it away.

The needle withdrew, only to be replaced by a new one as Bruce started to take a second bag. Still, Bucky didn’t watch. He was far from squeamish about blood, especially his own, but Bruce was on his right while Clint and Kilgrave were on his left, and he wasn’t letting them out of his sight for a second.

“There.” Kilgrave swung his legs off the workbench, spinning slightly in the chair. “Nice and quiet. See, that wasn’t hard.” He spun around to face Bruce. “Hurry up. I’m done waiting.”

Unable to do anything else useful, Bucky used the opportunity to analyze the full extent of the situation. This lab was smaller than the one they had vacated, although still state of the art. Wide windows looked out on the Compound grounds, the blinds only half-shut. He had half a hope that someone would see in the windows and get a grasp of the situation, before that hope evaporated.

There was no one else left to come to their rescue.

Bucky turned his attention from their environment to their enemy instead. For all his loud talk, Kilgrave looked tired. Exhausted, even. The purple suit was worn, his shoes scuffed, hair left unwashed. He looked as though he’d been living rough for at least a few days, which seemed unusual for someone with his abilities.

The man was running, Bucky concluding, most likely from the Jessica that he wouldn’t shut up about. At least some part of him was scared of her, enough for him to risk coming into the Avengers Compound anyway. 

Scared people were vulnerable. Scared people made mistakes.

Bucky took a breath as Bruce prepped him to take a third pint. He’d lost about that before, in much more gruesome conditions than this. Clint needed to be in full-health, not him. He’d be fine. Even as he thought it, he felt his head begin to grow cloudy, the floor tilting dangerously. He felt the needle almost slip before Bruce’s hand was on his other shoulder, keeping him upright. His first instinct was to jerk away from the touch, then remembered the cost of disobeying and forced himself to stay still.

Bruce withdrew the third needle, and Bucky prayed there wouldn’t be a fourth. He could probably take it, but he’d be almost useless if it came to a fight later. Even now, he was fighting the dizziness, feeling his breath come in shorter gasps. Clint hadn’t taken his eyes off the floor, but Bucky could tell he was watching him closely. He signed _I’m ok,_ hoping Kilgrave wouldn’t catch it. Hoping Steve and Natasha would.

It felt like an eternity before Bruce straightened back up, not taking a fourth pint. Bucky was still woozy, but he wasn’t down yet.

“How long?” Kilgrave demanded.

“An hour or so. Shorter if I have someone to help me.”

Bucky couldn’t help but glance over at Natasha and Steve again, wondering how long Kilgrave had had them standing like that already. Steve would be fine, but Natasha was supposed to be on bed rest. Bucky looked her up and down, searching for signs that she was fading, but her posture showed nothing but resoluteness. That said, if Kilgrave had commanded her to stay like that until he said otherwise, she’d have no choice to stay there until her body gave out.

“You.” Kilgrave snapped his fingers at Clint. “I’m promoting you. Go assist him.”

Clint didn’t move.

“Clint,” Bucky said quietly, aware of the archer carefully watching him. “Go help Banner.”

Clint nodded once, short and sharp, before clambering his feet and making his way over to Bruce’s workstation, still determinedly not looking Kilgrave’s way. Kilgrave didn’t seem to care, addressing his next words to the room at large. “You know, it _is_ nice here. Stark has ok taste, I suppose. A little flashy for me, but that’s Americans for you. Don’t appreciate the finer things.” He stood, starting to circle the room. “Computer voice thing? Open the blinds all the way.”

Bucky had a half-second to shut his eyes before the lab suddenly filled with harsh light, half-astonished to see it was a beautiful day outside. Peaceful, even.

“Not how I would have done it,” Kilgrave remarked, looking out at the grounds. “A little bland, isn’t it? Just all grass. Could plant some flowers at least, nice garden, maybe. Put up some fruit trees. Could make it real nice.”

He started sauntering the length of the room, hands in pockets, still taking in the lawns. “Paths to walk down, benches to sit on. Jessica would like that. New York’s bad for her, anyone could see that. Except her. She can’t see what’s bad for her like I can. I took her away from all that. I’m going to take her away again. Make her happy. Fix her. Make her admit that she’s in love with me.” He paused at the end of the line of windows. “And then I’ll reject her. Maybe even kill her. Never killed anyone before, but she might be worth it. World’s better off without her anyway. Some hero she turned out to be.”

He turned back into the lab, Bucky tracking him as every move brought him closer to Steve and Natasha. “Not that you lot are doing much better. Media’s all in a tizzy about you, aren’t they? Rogues and bombings and Civil Wars and all that drama. Don’t know why Jessica wanted to be one of you so badly. And she had the gall to call me the bad guy.”

Bucky tensed as Kilgrave paused by Steve’s shoulder, looking around the lab. “It _is_ nice,” Kilgrave admitted. “It wouldn’t take much. Change out the art, up the household staff…bet Stark keeps you all in luxury housing up here. I imagine it wouldn’t be so bad, once the last kinks are ironed out.” He waved at where Bruce and Clint were working. Bucky tried to play catch up, another wave of dizziness threatening to knock him over. Kilgrave wasn’t talking about _staying,_ was he? 

“And I wouldn’t get in the way of any of the heroics, oh no. I could make you all play nice. Bring Jessica up to play with you. You could all go out and do the hero thing and smile for the cameras and never have any problems again. I did the hero thing once,” he added conversationally. “Hostage situation. Nasty things, right? I wouldn’t want to be involved in one. Would have kept at it too if Jessica hadn’t…”

The world suddenly spun, and Bucky had half a second to catch himself as he fell forward over his forearm, pain ripping up the infected wound in his side. He choked back a groan.

“I’m just saying,” Kilgrave was droning on, ignoring him. “If I was in charge up here, I could take all that pain and hurt away, for good. Everyone would be holding hands and singing Kumbaya by tea time. No more arguments, no more infighting. Just everyone doing what they’re told.”

Bucky winced, forcing himself to raise his head back up, catching Clint’s concerned look first. _I’m ok,_ he signed.

He didn’t see Clint’s response. There was a blur of movement in the corner of his eye, and he turned his head just in time to see Kilgrave’s hand come down hard on Steve’s arm. “I’d do a better job than the star-spangled man with a plan, anyway. Can’t deny that leadership around here has been lacking.”

Bucky’s eyes were rooted on Kilgrave’s hand, forcing himself to stay in place even as his thoughts screamed at him to move. _Get off. Get off him, now._

“That was the point of the whole Accords thing, wasn’t it? Get you lot under control? Don’t usually go in for politics, but when they end up with people like me, just trying to mind their own business, in _bloody underwater prisons_ , one starts to pay attention to these things.” 

His hand slipped away from Steve, and Bucky had a half-second of relief. Then he approached Natasha instead.

Kilgrave considered her. “I remember you. Your speech on Capitol Hill, couple years back. Very moving, very passionate. ‘If you want to arrest me, arrest me, you know where to find me.’ Not bad, very ‘girl power’.” Natasha’s face remained neutral, eyes remaining just to the right of Steve’s face. Bucky figured if he was being forced to hold a friend at gunpoint, he wouldn’t want to make eye contact either. 

Kilgrave raised a hand as though he was going to stroke it down Natasha’s cheek, but paused before he did so. “A shame about the hair. What a waste. Is it going to grow back? Tell me.”

“Yes,” Natasha answered, barely audible.

“And all…this,” Kilgrave gestured to the bandaging around her face. “That’s not hiding some hideous scarring or something, is it? It’s going to heal?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.” Kilgrave flicked his eyes up and down her body. “Good. Wouldn’t be much use otherwise, would you?” And he went to brush her cheek.

The smash of glass caused him to jerk his hand back, spitting in anger as he whirled around to stare at where a small pool of blood was spreading across the lab floor.

Bucky’s first instinct was to look at Clint, thinking he’d caused a distraction to stop Kilgrave touching Natasha, but the archer was still determinably looking at the floor. Bruce, on the other hand, was staring at the blood, his hand still raised from where he had knocked over the beaker.

Any thoughts of it being on purpose left Bucky’s mind when get saw the guilt written over the physicist’s face as he looked Bucky’s way, knowing what was coming next.

“I’ll fix it,” Bruce said quickly, already reaching for a fresh needle. “I’m nearly there, I promise. This will hardly slow us down.”

Kilgrave glared at him, the room holding its breath. _Just leave it,_ Bucky prayed. _Please, don’t take it out on someone. Just_ leave _it._

“No more delays.”

“None,” Bruce promised, already back at Bucky’s side. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, as he arranged the needle. “It was an accident.”

“I know. I can take it.” _Probably._  


This time, he didn’t even feel the needle going in. Just the dizziness increasing tenfold as he slumped to one side, unable to remain on his knees any longer. He was half-aware of Clint shooting him a concerned look. _I’m fine,_ he signed again. _Focus on the others._

Bucky took a breath as Bruce returned to his workstation, knowing that if he passed out now, he’d be no good to anyone. He’d once bled all over a mountainside, packed the wound with snow, and hobbled back six miles to his handlers. 

_Except that wasn’t you. It was the Soldier._

_It was my body though. They built me to be indestructible._

_You’re not, though. You can die. You can be unmade._  


Warm hands stirred him out of his thoughts as something was pressed to his lips, and then cool liquid was tipping down his throat. He tried to jerk away, but the hand kept him in place, a familiar voice saying, “Drink. You need fluids.”

Yeah, that voice. He trusted that voice. When had he closed his eyes?

He choked the liquid down, too sweet to be water, forcing his eyes back open to find Clint leaning over him. He was lying down. How long had he been lying down?

Clint tried to offer him the bottle again, but Bucky pushed him away as he forced himself up on his elbows, just in time to see Bruce inject a needle into Kilgrave’s arm. “No. You can’t -”

“It’s done,” Clint was whispering. “Ok? It’s done.”

Bucky’s cloudy mind had a few seconds to hope that somehow Banner had found a loophole in the mind control, or Clint had managed to contaminate whatever the concoction was, or that his blood was so polluted from Hydra’s meddling that the injection would kill Kilgrave on the spot.

For one sweet, hopeful moment, a yell of pain seemed to confirm the last theory.

Kilgrave shoved Bruce away from him in a move that would have been suicidal if the Hulk hadn’t been under strict orders to not make an appearance. Bruce hissed as he bent over, clutching his injured shoulder, but Bucky’s eyes were fixed on Kilgrave. The man was bent double, snarling as veins appeared up both arms, his skin going bright red before suddenly washing out pale.

“Clint -” Bucky hauled himself upright, looking to where Steve and Natasha were standing. This was their chance. Kilgrave was incapacitated, maybe dying, and Bucky was weak but he was fast.

He made to move forward but Clint gripped his arm, stopping him with a, “Don’t. You’ll get them killed.”

A second shriek of pain, louder than the first, and then Kilgrave was wrenching himself upright. Sweat drenched his forehead as he looked down at his hands, the veins receding again. A manic grin broke out over his face. “Yes. God, yes, I can _feel_ it.”

Bucky felt Clint’s hand tighten on his arm, keeping his back to Kilgrave. His heart sped up, waiting. There was always a chance it hadn’t worked. That the numbers hadn’t added up or Banner’s ‘cure' wouldn’t work or whatever safeguards Shuri had secured in his mind would be enough to resist.

“And now the test.”

There was still a chance.

“Both of you. Kneel. Don’t speak, don’t move.”

The command hit home.

Clint’s grip became a vice as he helped Bucky to his knees. Bucky felt his body lock down, the familiar muzzle snap home.

_Ready to comply._

Clint shuffled into the same position opposite him, so they were facing each other, arm still on Bucky’s.

“That’s a good start. But just to check you’re not faking…”

Kilgrave tugged the empty needle out of an unresisting Bruce’s hand, striding to Clint’s side. 

“Arrow guy. You caused me so much unnecessary trouble today.” He thrust the used needle in Clint’s face. “So why don’t you put this through your hand.”

There were three seconds when nobody moved except Bruce, who was fidgeting his hands in front of him in an act of nervousness. Bucky didn’t look directly at him, hoping the scientist had picked up on the game, that he had understood what they had been trying to do.

Then Clint took the needle and, without hesitation, drove it through the back of his left hand.

Kilgrave clapped his hands together. “It worked. It worked!” He spun away from them, not bothering to hide the relief there. “It worked. Dammit, it worked. I’m safe. I’m actually _safe.”_ The last word was said with a crazed laugh. Bucky tracked his movements, trying to ignore the needle emerging from Clint’s skin. The plunger was wobbling from the slight trembles wracking Clint’s arm.

“Ok, it worked,” Bruce said, his tone all caution. “You can go now, ok? Because people are going to notice if a whole building of Avengers goes unresponsive for too long.”

“People will notice what I tell them to notice,” Kilgrave dismissed him, eyes casting around the lab again. “And it _is_ nice here. And really, I couldn’t ask for anywhere more secure.”

Bucky felt Clint go rigid beneath him at his words. He didn’t want Kilgrave to stay here any more than Clint did, but to Bucky, this building was barely more than a glorified prison. To Clint, it was home.

_Get out. Just get out, you absolute bastard, get out get out get out -_

Then -

“Nah,” Kilgrave decided. “Nice place, but far too much work. And Jessica had her chance for us to be heroes together. Speaking of, time to pay her a visit. It is _long_ overdue.”

_Get out get out get out -_

But Kilgrave didn’t head towards the door. He went back over to Steve and Natasha instead. “One last order of business.”

Clint’s hand was a vice on his now, the way he was kneeling meaning he couldn’t see what was going on. Bucky tried to squeeze back, but he was locked into rigidity, powerless to stop whatever happened next.

Kilgrave paused between Steve and Natasha, scanning them like he was reading a menu. “Just because I can overpower the immunity now, doesn’t mean the control is permanent. Might be, but why take chances, right?”

Bruce stepped forward, twisting his hands together. “We’ve all done what you asked, yeah? You got what you came for. No one else needs to get hurt.”

“No one needed to get hurt in the first place,” Kilgrave snapped back. “If you had just done as I asked, I would have been long gone by now and you’d all be back playing dress-up. But apparently, you lot are not the best are following instructions. Which is why I’m going to need some insurance.”

“You don’t,” Bruce tried to bargain. “We’re finished, ok? We won’t come after you if you just -”

“Don’t say another word to me,” Kilgrave retorted, and Bruce’s jaw snapped shut, cutting off the rest of his sentence. “That’s the problem with you hero types. You think you’re better than everyone else. But you’re not - not by a long shot. And I’m not spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for you lot, which is why one of them -” He thrust a finger at Steve and Natasha. “- is coming with me.”

Bucky felt what was left of his blood turn cold as he fought with everything he had against the weight holding him down. _Come on, Barnes, you’ve done this before. You got out from under Hydra, right?_

_Yeah, after seventy years. With Steve’s help. And you’re not getting his help now._

“Which one, though?” Kilgrave mused, tracing a finger down Natasha’s arm that Bucky was glad Clint couldn’t see. “Always had a thing for pretty girls. Not just looks though, I’m not shallow. The tough ones. Bit of grit, you know. The ones who’ve had to fight. I like taking them away and putting them in soft houses with soft beds and soft dresses. They don’t need to fight anymore, not when they’re with me. They’re safe with me. And if the hair is growing back, and there’s not going to be any scarring…would you like that?” he asked Natasha. “Tell me you’d like me to take care of you.”

“I’d like you to take care of me,” Natasha repeated, her voice low.

Kilgrave’s eyes narrowed. “Like you mean it.”

The room seemed to drop several degrees as Natasha said, sweetly, innocently, not sounding anything like Natasha at all, “I’d like you to take of me.”

“I know you would, sweetheart.” His hand had found its way to the small of her back. Bucky glared at it like he could burn it off from across the room. “Then again,” Kilgrave continued, finally taking his hand away. Bucky had a half-second of relief before it trailed across to Steve’s shoulder instead, and he redoubled his efforts to get free. _Come on, it’s for Steve. That’s your thing, right? ’Til the end of the line? Come on,_ move.

“Having Captain America as your own personal bodyguard? That’s pretty damn cool.” A smile lit up his face as he considered it, only for it to falter as he added, “Shame the shield is missing though. Although, I guess, maybe too conspicuous. So, which one, which one…”

He started to pace around them, taking his time with the choice, and Bucky thought he might be going insane from the helplessness, from being able to do _nothing._ He tried to assure himself that even if Kilgrave walked out with one of them today, they’d find him. _Bucky_ would find him. Hydra had had him for seventy years and Steve had still managed to pull him out in the end. They’d always find each other in the end. Right?

_Til the end of the line til the end of the line til the end of the line -_

The loud bang would have made Bucky flinch if he could move. Kilgrave had smashed his hands together in a clap, a delighted decision on his face. “You know what? I’ve worked so hard for this. I think I deserve to treat myself, don’t you?”

_Move, move, MOVE -_

“So why don’t I just take both? The girl and the muscle.” He leaned down and placed a wet kiss on Natasha’s cheek. “Tell me you’d like that.”

“I’d like that,” Natasha parroted.

“Right.” Kilgrave made his way towards the door, beckoning to Steve and Natasha. “Put the guns away. Follow me. Don’t talk to anyone.”

Any relief Bucky felt at seeing the two weapons finally lowered was quashed as his friends trailed after Kilgrave with no hesitation, towards the door and out of his eye line.

“Everyone in this room, _stay_ in this room. And if I see anything that even closely resembles an Avenger come after me, I’ll have them blow each other’s brains out. Got it?”

Then the door was closed behind him. They were gone.

And Clint was moving.

Bruce was by their side in an instant, helping Clint pull the needle out of his hand. “You’re not -”

“Nope.” Clint ran a hand over his ears, tracing where the hearing aids usually rested. “Can’t follow orders if you can’t hear them. Hey.” He cupped Bucky under the chin with his uninjured hand, the touch firm and reassuring. “I’ll get them back. Both of them. I promise. You trust me?”

He did, Bucky realized with a start. And he had before, as a handler, as a friend, but this was deeper. He was trusting Clint with Steve’s life.

Bucky had no way of responding, but Clint seemed to understand because he scooted out of the way, indicating Bruce to take his place.

”The others?” Bruce asked.

“They’re ok,” Clint assured him. “Relatively speaking, at least.” He turned back to Bucky. “Bruce is going to take care of you, ok? I know being poked and prodded by a doctor -”

“Still not that kind of doctor.”

“- while you’re like this isn’t ideal, but I trust him, so you can trust him, and you’re hurt and lost a lot of blood, and that can’t afford to wait.” For a moment, it looked like Clint was going to say something else, then he settled on repeating, “I’ll get them back.”

Then he was gone, and Bucky and Bruce were left alone together.

“Hi.” Bruce shot a nervous glance beyond Bucky, at the door Clint had just left through. “We haven’t officially met. I’m Bruce.”

_I know._

“But you probably know that. Sorry we aren’t meeting under better circumstances. I know a lot about you.”

_I bet you do._ He was itching to turn his head, to go help Clint, to do _anything,_ but the damn forces that were locking his muscles in place weren’t shifting an inch.

“Usually I’d recommend a blood transfusion at this point,” Bruce was saying. “But I don’t think we have any of your blood on hand. I know we have Steve’s, but your serums are very different. I don’t think combining the two is a good idea. Trust me.” He offered Bucky a wry smile. “I know a little something about messing with Erskine’s formula.”

He reached for Bucky’s shirt, where he could feel the blood and pus from the side wound seeping through. He tensed up, unable to shift away from the unwanted touch. 

Bruce must have noticed because he paused. “I know this isn’t ideal. And I understand - about not having control over your own body. About having someone else in the driver’s seat while feeling like you’re locked in the trunk. And believe me, if I could wait until you were giving me nothing but enthusiastic consent I would, but I’ve seen less severe infections than this be fatal, enhanced healing factor or not. I’m not really up for letting someone die from something I could have prevented.” He glanced towards the door again. “And on a more selfish note, I wouldn’t mind the distraction.”

Bucky couldn’t do anything as Bruce retrieved what looked like an emergency medical kit from one of the workbenches and whipped out a pair of scissors to start cutting away the remains of his shirt, wincing when he saw the repulser burns up one side. “I’m guessing you ran into Tony on the way here.”

He dug around in the medical kit until he retrieved a gel. “I’m going to put this on the burns, ok? It’ll help.”

The last thing in the world Bucky wanted right now was for something to touch him when he couldn’t stop them, but he forced himself to remember that this was someone Clint trusted, that Steve and Natasha trusted, who was only trying to help.

He grew, if possible, even tenser, as unfamiliar fingers brushed his skin. Almost immediately, a rush of relief followed as the heat from the burns dimmed significantly. He hadn’t even realized how much they’d been hurting. He was used to tucking away pain until he could deal with it later.

“Better? That was the easy one.” Bruce turned to the jagged cut up Bucky’s side. “I’m going to have to clean that out. It’s going to hurt. A lot.”

Bucky made a sound of frustration in the back of his throat. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be with Clint, going after Steve and Natasha, not crouching here hurt and useless on the floor.

“Yeah, I know,” Bruce muttered. “But we’re stuck here. And listen - I’ve seen Clint and Natasha in the field together. One of them could be on a barren planet in the depths of space, and if they were in trouble the other one would find them. Clint will get them back, I can assure you. He will.” The last sentence sounded like it was aimed more at himself than at Bucky. Bucky wondered how he could remain so calm while two of their friends were being dragged away by a purple-suited maniac before he remembered who he was with. Bruce Banner had to be the master of compartmentalizing anger and fear.

Bruce prepared a cloth, being careful to touch Bucky as little as possible as he reached for his side. “Ready?”

Bucky braced himself, but still let out a low hiss as the chemicals burned into the open wound.

“Sorry,” Bruce murmured, as he continued to clean. “I’ll do the bare minimum, ok? The rest can wait until Kilgrave’s control wears off.”

Which would be when? He’d had Stark and probably Peter for at least a day, and that was before his powers had been boosted. Was he _stuck_ like this? 

Bucky grit his teeth as Bruce started to wipe around the staples, where the worst of the infection was gathering. “We should probably run some tests down the road, if you’re comfortable with that,” Bruce was saying. “Get some of your blood on retainer too, just in case.” He paused, considering. “Is that why you came to see me earlier?" He gestured to the wound. “About this?”

Bucky had no way of replying, but Bruce seemed to put two and two together anyway. “Sorry,” he muttered. “For sending you away. Kilgrave told me to tell anyone who came by the lab to fuck off, so…”

Bucky felt himself flush. Clint had been right. Bruce _would_ have helped - was helping.

That put Bucky’s thoughts back on what Clint was doing right now. If he’d taken out Kilgrave. If Steve and Natasha were safe. Or if something so much worse had happened instead.

“When I said I knew a lot about you before,” Bruce continued. “I didn’t mean from the United Nations or the Accords, or anything. Well yeah, ok, I do know a lot about that, more than I’d like sometimes, but I meant from before.”

Bucky winced as a Bruce tackled a particularly deep tear from where he’d pulled a staple in the fight against Stark. “So, Captain America, big reading subject of mine,” Bruce continued. “Even before I tried to duplicate Erskine’s formula. Long story short; unhappy childhood requires escapism. One day I was headed back from school when I found this box of old Captain America comics in a garage sale. I didn’t have any money for them, so I tried to steal them. I don’t know why. It’s not exactly something Cap would have approved of.”

An old memory stirred in Bucky’s mind; of swiping newspapers from a vendor to fill out Steve’s oversized, secondhand shoes. Steve had worn them for three days before it had come out where Bucky had gotten the newspapers from, and then refused to use them again, even as the shoes rubbed blisters in his feet so deep they bled.

“I got about three feet until I tripped over my own shoes, comics going everywhere. The owner of the house caught me; I thought he was going to be furious. But when I fell, my shirt rode up, and I think he saw all the bruises, because he just told me to collect the comics and be on my way.” Bruce went very quiet for a moment, even as he didn’t pause in the methodical work. “There was a name written on the inside of each of them. Robert. And a bunch of kid’s stuff for sale. But no kids there.”

He leaned back from the wound. “I’m going to have to suture that properly, or that infection is going to get worse. Then we can figure out some antibiotics. I made some for Steve that might work on you if we tweak the formula a bit. Especially if this is a regular occurrence?”

Bucky flushed. It was inflected as a question, but Bucky had no doubt that Bruce had figured out exactly where the injury had come from.

Bruce reached for the necessary equipment. “I used to do that,” he said, his voice a murmur. “So I get it. But anyway, comics.” He threaded the needle. “They were all about the Howling Commandos. And I know probably two-thirds of it never happened, and the remaining third didn’t happen as they tell it, but they were still good stories. It’s something Clint and I used to talk about a lot.”

_What?_ Clint had never told him that.

“It’s apparently something Coulson was very passionate about. I’m sure Clint’s told you about Coulson.”

He…hadn’t.

“So Clint got them all secondhand from him, so we both knew all the stories. It was fun to talk about sometimes, even though I think Steve would die from embarrassment if he found that out. Tony would join in too, sometimes. But he only talked about the Howling Commandos when he was drunk, so I’m not sure he even remembers."

Now Bucky really wasn’t following. He was fighting to keep his eyes open, head foggy and woozy, the last of the adrenaline that had been keeping him upright slipping away. 

“They’re going to be fine,” Bruce said softly, more to himself than Bucky. “Clint will get to them. They’re going to be fine.”

Bucky let his eyes slipped closed, the exhaustion from the blood loss finally taking over. _Yes, they’ll be fine. Clint will get them back. Please, Clint -just get them back._


	8. Chapter 8

Clint Barton had been deaf since he was sixteen years old.

He’d suffered temporary hearing loss before then, courtesy of his father giving him one too many boxes around the ears - enough to start developing a knack for lip-reading. Then had come a reprieve in the form of a smoking car wrapped around a tree, until brother had stepped up to take father’s place. Barney wasn’t as strong though, and he tended to stay away from the face. Carson’s had needed their Hawkeye’s face intact after all. For performance purposes.

For other purposes.

So his ears had healed, even as other parts of him became more battered and bruised with time.

Then Duquesne had happened.

It was one of the nightmares from Carson’s that he could never seem to shake, even as years and therapy sessions and fresh traumas sped by. The slip of the rope, held by a too-drunk grip. The firing of a canon, too soon, too close. Nothing but the ringing in his ears as he’d slipped unconscious, sure that was the end, and feeling nothing but a deep resignation as he slipped under.

But it wasn’t the end. Not by a long shot. 

Living on the streets hadn’t allowed money for hearing aids, and food had taken priority over what little he managed to scrounge, steal, or earn.

It made everything harder. The men he couldn’t hear creeping up behind him. The police sirens which, when seen, proved that it was already too late. The bullet he didn’t hear until it hit him. 

He still had the scar; a clean shot through the abdomen. A wide miss, or an exact bullseye.Phil had always claimed that it was the latter. It had taken Clint three years and a particularly nasty extraction from Panama (that had chewed through a sizeable chunk of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s annual budget) to finally believe him.

It took Phil even longer to believe that Clint didn’t lose or break his S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued hearing aids on purpose, or that he was careless, or he didn’t trust the secret organization's technology. Except for a few rare morsels life had tossed his way, it was just Barton Luck.

S.H.I.E.L.D.’s crappy design and constant delaying of upgrades didn’t help things either. Apparently, the time and budget to improve technology suited to only one agent wasn’t high on their priority list, and the dollars dropped on the disastrous Panama retrieval hadn’t helped.

Clint hadn’t even questioned it. It was how things were. And after living on the streets for so long with nothing at all, even the miniature Walkmans S.H.I.E.L.D. had shoved in his ears were a luxury. With the frequency with which they lost or broke, he was surprised that S.H.I.E.L.D. kept supplying them at all.

Then Clint had met Tony Stark.

He’d had a running bet with Natasha with how long he could hold onto his current pair of hearing aids, and had woken with a groan in a sewer to realize that that was a gamble he had lost. Again. They’d been fighting some weird crocodile-robot hybrid thing that had made Clint its new favorite chew toy. Thor’s hammer had rather savagely booped its snout, and subsequently sent Clint tumbling down the nearest manhole which, of course, was open. Because: _Barton Luck._

He must have been washed downtown somewhere, because he spent the next couple of hours trying to find his way home again, only to be ambushed by another crocodile-robot hybrid thing, which was a lot bigger than the other, that he hadn’t been able to hear coming.

The noise had alerted Steve, who had been just around the corner and had swooped in with a dramatic rescue before the thing turned Clint into dinner.

Later, Clint would learn that Steve had been ‘just around the corner’ for at least forty minutes, calling out Clint’s name as he tracked him through the sewer. Clint, who had had no idea help was so close, had spent a pointless two hours trying to be as quiet as possible to avoid the aforementioned crocodile-robot hybrid thing and instead ended up avoiding an easy rescue. 

When he had finally stopped laughing, Tony had made him new hearing aids by the next day. “There. Waterproof, heatproof, bulletproof -”

“I think if someone is shooting me in the ear, I have bigger problems to worry about.”

_“And,”_ Tony had ignored him. “They don’t come out. Well, they do, obviously, if you need them to. There’s a release on the side, but hidden so it can’t be pushed accidentally. Or forcefully, in case of particular assholey bad guys. Oh, and pretty much infinite battery life. You are talking to the biggest name in green energy right now. Here,” He had tossed them across the room to Clint. “Try them on.”

Clint had brushed the gesture off, because neither he nor Tony were ones to dwell on ‘thank yous’ or ‘you’re welcomes’, but they had made all the difference. They didn’t break. They didn’t fall out at the first serious hit. They even had tracking devices, accessible to only Clint and to Tony (“Only for emergencies,” Tony had promised. “Scout’s honor. I really don’t need to know what you get up to on your downtime, Barton. I shudder just thinking about it.”)

That last memory hit home as Clint sprinted past the cupboard when Tony and Rhodey were still tied up, now surely conscious. A small part of him wanted to check on them, to tell them that everything was going to be ok, but he didn’t have time for that, and neither did Natasha or Steve.

Walking in and seeing his friends so vulnerable, when _he_ was vulnerable, was something that was going to steal a lot of sleep after all this was over. Natasha, who was supposed to be on bed rest, had barely been keeping her feet. She’d hidden it well, so much so that no one but Clint would have noticed it. He’d half-hoped she would pass out - one less shield for Kilgrave to throw in front of him - but it seemed Kilgrave’s orders were going to keep her up and doing what he wanted until the last ounce of energy left her body.

He fingered the hearing aids he’d tucked into his pocket as he dropped next to Tony’s abandoned housing unit, deliberately not looking at the locked door that was trapping his two downed teammates. He didn’t dare put them back in - hadn’t even dared to watch Kilgrave’s lips when they were in the lab together. That had almost cost them close to the end, but thank god Bruce had caught onto their plan and had signaled the second-worst sentence Clint had ever seen signed.

He rubbed the spot where the needle had pierced, hastily wrapped in a scrap of cloth on his way out of the lab. The injury itself didn’t bother him so much as the mingling of his blood with a stranger’s, and an enhanced stranger’s at that. He’d seen soldiers die of less.

But those were complications for another time, when a psychopath wasn’t dragging two of his closest friends off to god-knows-where. In any other situation, he would have had fallbacks. He would have trusted Natasha to find the way no one else could see, to get herself free, or at least get a message out if she ended up in a secondary location.

But she wouldn’t be doing that this time. She would have no way to help him find her, no way to get herself out. A rescue was now or a terrifying never.

Clint said a prayer to a god he had long stopped believing that Tony had finished programming this feature of his suit. Clint placed his hand on the unit. _Come on, Stark._

He was pretty sure Tony would have implemented it almost as soon as he'd had the idea. They were alike in that way, even if their motives were different. Tony was always thinking ahead, trying to figure out every variable and preparing a hundred failsafes for each of them. Clint was always thinking back, over all the ways life had screwed him over in the past, and never letting himself get comfortable. Any shit that had been thrown his way could be thrown again. Any reprieve gifted to him could be ripped away.

Like Aceso reversing the damage to his ears, and her ending up in New S.H.I.E.L.D.’s morgue the same week.

Even when he was in S.H.I.E.L.D., he’d still train without the hearing aids. Despite Phil and later Fury’s reassurances that Clint was there to stay, he’d never quite believed them. Any time life had offered him something that felt like peace, it hadn’t lasted. He didn’t know how long this support was going to stay, how long he’d have access to these resources, so he always made sure that he could get by without them.

And, sure enough, S.H.I.E.L.D. had fallen. The Avengers had split. And now Clint was in a situation where the hearing aids were useless.

_Because I’m paranoid as fuck,_ he’d told Bucky. Was it paranoia if you turned out to be right?

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.? Do you have access to the Bleeding Edge armor right now?”

F.R.I.D.A.Y. must have registered he didn’t have his hearing aids in, because the housing unit lit up green as a yes, then started to assemble itself.

“I don’t want a suit,” Clint said hastily. The brief sojourn in the armor when he had been taking out Rhodey had been long enough for a lifetime, and Kilgrave would see it coming a mile away. More importantly, so would Steve and Natasha. He wouldn’t be able to get to them before they got to each other.

He rolled his eyes in a manner that would have made Tony proud as he said the next words. “Code Lego Legolas.”

The housing unit sprung to life. He snatched his hand back as the blue interior starting spilling nanotech into the air. But not into the shape of a suit, or a gauntlet, or anything else Iron Man related.

They formed into the shape of a red and gold bow.

He snatched the weapon up the moment it was formed, testing the weight. It didn’t have the warmth or familiarity of his usual arsenal, but it slotted right into his hand. Perfectly balanced. Made just for him.

An empty quiver followed, leaving an unposed question.

“Taser,” Clint answered without hesitation. “As strong as you can without it being lethal.”

As much as Clint would enjoy putting an arrow straight through the roof of Kilgrave’s mouth, he wasn’t going to kill him unless he absolutely had to. Just because the effects of the other enhanced had vanished with they died, didn’t mean Kilgrave’s would. Aceso and Janus had been experiments of Strucker’s. Kilgrave’s origins had been redacted, but Clint wasn’t taking the risk. While the control on the others might wear off in time, he had no idea how long Kilgrave’s influence would last after Bruce had made him strong enough to overcome their immunity.

No idea how long Bucky would be forced to kneel on the cold lab floor, mouth sealed shut,waiting for further instructions.

It had killed Clint to leave him there, even under Bruce’s care. Even though he was sure Loki was off Earth for good, even though the God of Mischief wouldn’t have a reason for coming after him even if he did return, Clint had woken many a night in his and Laura’s bed to check that his eyes hadn’t turned blue.

_I’m coming back._ Clint made the silent promise as he added arrows to his quiver, heading to the scorched elevator. _I’ll get you out._

The inside was scorched to hell, but he didn’t have time for a ride anyway. “Send it up, Fri.”

The doors rumbled shut, not being able to close all the way from where Tony had bent them. Clint forced them open again the second the elevator was out of the way. He grabbed the cable, using the bow to slide his way to the bottom without burning his hands. He hit the ground a bit harder than he had meant to in his haste, grunting as shockwaves were sent up both knees and he tumbled sideways with a grunt.

Ok. Not his smartest move. He couldn’t afford another miscalculation like that.

He cleaned his hands off on his now very stained tank top as he clambered to his feet. He looked down at himself, then at his environment, remembering his comment to Bucky in the elevator. “Well. Yippee-ki-yay then, motherfucker.”

He shook the tumble off, carefully prying open the elevator doors. He only managed to catch a glimpse of a full atrium before the barrel of a gun found his forehead.

He threw himself against the elevator shaft as more shots rang out in the confined space,Clint feeling the vibrations bouncing off the walls - too many to be just one weapon.

He could picture Kilgrave saying it. _If you see any of the Avengers, shoot them down._ To an aircraft-hanger sized space. Filled with people. Some of which had guns. Others of which were civilians, planted right in the crossfire.

Cursing, Clint considered options as dents continued to appear in the doors. He couldn’t fight his way through that many people without doing some serious damage, which wasn’t an option. Or at least, not a _good_ option. Despite what the Accords Committee might think, the Avengers did try to minimize civilian damage, even at the cost to themselves.

Clint huffed, mind racing. He could try going up a floor or two and hope Kilgrave hadn't made pitstops on his way out of the building, but that was going to cost him time he didn’t have. 

His choice was made for him when the elevator cable brushing his shoulder began to move.

_Goddamnit._ Someone must have called the elevator down, either to deliberately crush him, or to lure him out, or just because they were being a damn idiot. Not that the reasoning mattered. All that mattered was that the Compound elevators moved fast.

Out the doors wasn’t an option, so Clint grabbed the cable and hauled himself to the next floor up instead, throwing himself against the tiny ledge next to the doors. There was almost no room to stand and only his years spend on circus tightropes kept him from tumbling right off the edge again. He had no desire to become a Hawkeye-elevator sandwich, thank you very much.

The tremors in the walls increased tenfold so he used his bow to shove through the gap in the elevator doors, the weapon holding him in place as he pried them open. He yelled out to F.R.I.D.A.Y. for good measure, although he wasn’t sure how far the reprogramming Tony had been forced into would let him push the AI for help.

Just as the vibrations were so close that he could feel his teeth rattling, the doors plunged open and he was falling through them. Pain erupted in one shoulder as the doors clocked it on their way down, missing the rest of him by a millimeter.

He gave himself three breaths to get the pain under control, hissing as he tested his movement. Nothing was broken (probably), just a heck of a bruise tomorrow. Bruises he could handle.

Then shoes were in front of him and he instinctively rolled to his feet, arrow slotting neatly into place. The shoes scrambled backward as he pointed his bow into the face of a very scared looked man in a business suit who had been offering a hand to help him up.

Clint darted his eyes around, taking in the various people dressed in various shades of black and gray. Right. First floor. Accords Committee meeting rooms. _Fan-fucking-tastic._

The man was saying something, but Clint’s eyes were too busy taking in the far window to read his lips. He locked onto the three figures who were walking out to one of Tony’s fancier cars, one of the bulletproof ones he reserved mostly for Pepper. The black vehicle was parking out front, Kilgrave leading Steve and Natasha right to it. If he got them inside, it was game over.

Clint all but shoved the man in front of him aside, sprinting for the window. It was only the first floor, and he probably _could_ jump it, but it would almost definitely come with some injuries, especially after he’d mistimed the elevator jump. That, and it would probably draw attention to him damn quickly.

_If I see anything that even closely resembles an Avenger come after me, I’ll have them blow each other’s brains out. Got it?_

_That_ was the worst sentence Clint had ever seen signed.

Clint wrenched the locks on the window open, grabbing an arrow from the quiver. The action caused a commotion in his peripherals, and he sent a silent apology to Maria and Pepper, who would no doubt be drowning in paperwork for several weeks after this stunt.

The shot wasn't clean, and it wasn't going to be no matter how he angled himself - not from inside.  He cursed, glared at one particularly brave or stupid Committee member that had gotten a bit too close, then heaved himself out of the window. 

When this was over, Clint resolved to have a serious chat with Tony about the pleasures of balconies. Sure, the sheer fronts of the Compound buildings _looked_ nice, but he would take practicalities over aesthetics any day of the week. At least the Tower had allowed for some height-defying parkour practice. He’d almost caused a Hulk-out the time he had been aiming for Tony’s workshop, misjudged it, and ending up using a grappling arrow to catch himself and slamming into the window of Bruce’s lab instead. 

Clint perched on the barely-there ledge and found himself faced with a new problem. He wasn’t going to be able to draw his bow back far enough to get the range, not without toppling to the pavement below and setting off the kamikaze stunt Kilgrave had rigged his teammates to pull. And they were almost at the car.

He would have been out of time if Kilgrave, instead of marching them straight into the car, hasn’t wasted time on ordering the driver out of the front seat.

Clint suddenly became aware of something moving to his right and whipped his head around, expecting a threat. Instead, he saw the Committee member from before still hovering near him, looking nervous but resolute, as though she was preparing herself to dive forward and catch him if needed. Clint slammed his palm on the still closed window next to him, eyes fixed on her. “Open it. _Now!”_ he shouted, when she hesitated.

Several other suits stepped forward with the intent to stop her, but she shook them off, even though it took her longer than Clint would have liked to get the window opened. All the while, Steve was getting closer to the driver’s seat while Kilgrave prepared to bundle Natasha into the back.

The window finally swung open and Clint didn’t let himself think before he shoved his hand back inside and then out the second window, using the bar in between as an anchor as he pressed back into the wall of the Compound and raised his bow. Holding it through the second window finally gave him the space to draw it back all the way, even though the angle was awkward and it hurt like _hell._ He felt all of it - the bullet graze on his arm, the blow from the elevator, the needle hole in his hand. But he swallowed it all down and aimed. The shot was close to impossible. 

But Hawkeye never missed.

The arrow hit its mark, slamming straight into Steve’s shoulder.

The super-solider had almost vanished into the car when the missile hit its bullseye, crumpling to the ground as Natasha turned and fired.

Natasha was fast, but not that fast, and Steve was on the ground and out of her range before the bullet had left the chamber. His muscles were spasming too much to keep a hold on his own weapon before he went completely still. Natasha went to move around the car to get a cleaner shot, as Clint fumbled for the second arrow. The usually swift movement was hampered by only being attached to the building by the window edge digging into his armpit and the tiny brace his heels had found, and he forced himself not to rush so much that he lost his footing. He wasn't going to be good to anyone if he fell and broke on the Compound parking lot.

Kilgrave had spun around at the first arrow, eyes finally finding Clint. Even from this distance, Clint could see them narrow as he barked a new order and Natasha’s weapon changed trajectory to point at her own head a split second before Clint’s second arrow was ready to fire.

They all waited like that, frozen, Natasha blocking with Kilgrave with her own body as each waited for the other to fire.

“Come on, Nat. Just give up.” It took Clint a moment to register that he’d said the words out loud, not being able to hear them. There was no way he’d read her body language wrong back in the lab. She had been barely holding on, only Kilgrave’s orders keeping her upright. And Natasha was strong but she was only human, and humans had limits. Eventually, the body always overpowered the mind.

Well. Nearly always. 

Kilgrave took an experimental step backward, Natasha moving with him. Clint didn’t fire.

_Give up, Nat._

Kilgrave opened the car door. Clint didn’t fire.

_I know you, Nat. Inside and out. There’s no way I read this wrong._

Kilgrave entered the car, backward, not moving his eyes off Clint. Natasha didn’t lower the gun from her head. And Clint didn’t fire.

_She’d rather be dead than go with him. You know that._

_And I know her, Phil. You know I do. This will work. This has to work._

Kilgrave went to close the car door, to seal himself in the armored car, when Natasha gave out, her unconscious and exhausted body collapsing in a heap as she dropped the gun.

It was so sudden that Kilgrave froze, staring, that mistake registering a second too late.

“Purple’s _my_ color, asshole,” Clint muttered as the arrow loosed, flying over Natasha and striking Kilgrave in the heart.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Solstice or whatever you're celebrating at the conclusion of this weird, strange, bizarre year.
> 
> You're all gifts x
> 
> TW: Brief discussion of self-harm

“How does that feel?”

Bucky twisted his torso one way, then the other, feeling only a mild sting of pain. “Better,” he admitted.

“Good.” Bruce handed him back his shirt. Bucky was perched on the end of his bed, Bruce having hauled an armchair alongside to check the injury in Bucky’s side. Bruce had hesitated at the unconventional medical setup they’d managed in Bucky’s bedroom, but hadn’t pushed him to come to his lab or the med bay instead. 

The Compound had been in chaos for the past couple of days. Injuries were being seen to, NDAs dispatched, and counselors brought in by the truckload. Kilgrave had been dragged back to the Compound by Clint at taser-point, the archer retracing their steps until Kilgrave had undone every single one of his commands. Then Clint had gagged him and guarded him until the authorities had arrived to drag the man back to the Raft.

The sight of Kilgrave with his mouth sealed shut, glaring murder at Clint as two suits hauled him into an armored car, was an image Bucky was going to savor. Clint had seemed to share the sentiment, bearing his crooked grin as the armored car drove away.

“Nothing like seeing the bad guy muzzled and whisked away to prison,” the archer had said. “Always a good time.”

Bucky hadn’t seen him since. Bruce had assured him that Clint was ok - just tied up in an endless amount of bureaucracy. That, and Bucky was betting he was spending any spare moment he got with Natasha. Being forced to stay on her feet until she had collapsed before she had recovered from the fire damage had earned her another week in the med bay. Scott had been whisked off to surgery and Sam was sporting two broken fingers, but both would recover, and Bruce and Peter had healed as soon as they had access to their powers again. Everyone else had gotten off with scrapes, bruises, and another slew of nasty memories to add to the ever-growing backlog.

Bucky pulled the shirt back on, hiding the fresh bandages layered up his side. It was healing well, but Bruce had insisted they be careful until Bucky had fully recovered from the blood loss, and until Bruce could come up with a strain of antibiotics that Hydra’s serum wouldn’t burn through before they could take effect.

“How is everyone else?” The question had become as routine as the checkups. Bucky had been keeping to his quarters, well out of the way of the post-Kilgrave panic, and Bruce had been his only visitor. Which was…nice. Bruce was _nice._

“They’re pulling through,” Bruce replied. “Nat managed to stay awake for eight hours straight yesterday, which is good progress.”

“And everything else?”

“No one’s in trouble,” he assured him. “Unless you call wading through a swamp of red tape trouble. Which I, actually, I guess I would. One thing I don’t miss about being on the run - there were no forms to fill out.”

Bruce never elaborated on that part of his life, and Bucky didn’t feel like he knew the man well enough to ask - at least not yet. Maybe one day they could swap stories. They could probably swap a _lot_ of stories. For all the comparisons Clint had tossed out between him and Natasha, Bucky thought that this was the Avenger he might have the most in common with - at least where it counted.

It made him feel just a little less alienated from the rest of the Compound.

Bruce gestured to the stack of books beside Bucky’s bed. The top one was carefully bookmarked at the quarter mark. “You liking le Carre?”

Bucky hesitated, not wanting to be rude. Bruce had lent him his copy of _The Spy Who Came in from the Cold_ after Bucky had mentioned he had been spending his downtime reading. “Um, yeah. It’s ok.”

“Was never quite my thing either, to be honest.” Bruce started to pack up his kit. “It might be a little out there for your tastes, but I could try you on some Gaiman or Pratchett.” He considered. “Actually, maybe Douglas Adams to start. If you’re into the fantasy/sci-fi stuff.”

Was he? Being asked for likes and preferences still felt foreign, especially now there was so much content to choose from. He hadn’t had much time for reading in the past, between working in the factory and then the war. Still, he had had a couple of well-worn volumes he and Steve had shared between them. “I like Tolkien and Verne,” he settled on.

“Then I think you might like Adams,” Bruce decided. “And if you don’t, we can try something else. Same time tomorrow?” 

It made absolutely no difference to Bucky, who didn’t exactly have a schedule to keep to, but he appreciated Bruce giving him the choice anyway. “Sure. Although, it’s on the mend.”

“Can’t be too careful.” Bruce went as though to get to his feet, but then seemed to change his mind. "Speaking of..."

Bucky tried not to tense, sensing the question coming.

Bruce settled back in his chair, twirling his thumbs together. “I know this isn’t my place to ask, and I’m sorry if I’m prying. But if I’m even partially responsible for your health then I need to check. Is it likely to happen again?”

Bucky quickly shook his head. “No. It’s not an ongoing thing, I promise." He gestured to his side. “This wasn’t even on purpose. I was just being was stupid.”

“It wasn’t stupid,” Bruce said softly. “It’s never stupid.”

_I used to do that._

Bucky colored a little as he remembered Bruce's words. “Sorry, I didn’t mean -”

Bruce waved him off. “That was a long time ago. Being blasted with enough gamma radiation to kill me kind of ended the desire for more pain.”

Bucky fought the edge to pick at the bandages, clasping his hands together instead. “It was an accident.”

“Ok," Bruce agreed, taking Bucky aback with how easy his tone was. "I believe you. But is it an accident that’s going to happen again?”

“No,” Bucky replied, sure. The visitor who had snuck into his room a couple of days ago had seen to that.“It’s not.”

Bruce hesitated a beat longer, then decided to leave it. Decided to trust him. “Ok then."

"Just like that?"  


"You can make your own decisions." He didn't linger on the words, standing. "I’ll see you tomorrow. Or have F.R.I.D.A.Y. give me a buzz if you need to see me sooner.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“Any time.”

Bruce’s hand was on the door handle, smiling back at Bucky as he opened it, and so didn’t see Clint until he walked right into him.

He bounced off him with a “Sorry,” that quickly turned into a “Dammit, Barton,” when he saw who it was.

Clint gave him a look of mock innocence. “You weren’t looking where you were going.”

Bruce sighed, everyone in the room knowing that Clint could have easily moved out of the way if he’d wanted to. He slid to one side, although Bruce still had to turn sideways and edge awkwardly past him, earning Clint an exasperated glare.

Clint hovered in the doorway after Bruce had departed. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Bucky quickly fixed his shirt, subtly trying to make sure the bandages were hidden before he remembered who he was trying to hide them from. “You can come in.”

“Door open or closed?”

“Closed.”

Clint nodded, making his way into the room. Bucky had never invited him in here before - they’d always met in the gym or the living area of Bucky’s quarters. Bucky swept his eyes self-consciously around the space. Not that he had enough possessions for it to be messy, or that he thought Clint would care. He’d seen the state of Clint’s gym bag.

Clint’s eyes lingered curiously on the stack of books beside Bucky’s bed. “You’re a reader?” Clint approached the bed, reaching over Bucky to pull a book from the middle of the stack, somehow without making the rest of them topple over. _“_ _The_ _Hobbit_ ,” he read off the cover. “You know they made a movie of this, right? Actually, three movies, I think.”

Bucky shrugged. “TV is still a little…fast for me.”

“Probably for the best.” Clint tossed the book back. “I heard they weren’t all that great anyway.”

“Have you read it?”

“Was never much of a reader,” Clint said, a little too quickly. “Give me a video game any day. You played one?”

Bucky shook his head.

“They’re like movies, but you can interact. Like you’re the main character.”

“I know what a video game is. I just haven’t played one.” He changed the subject. “How much trouble are you with the Committee?”

Clint scrunched up his nose. “Apparently taking a deadly weapon into a conference room filled with civilians and climbing out a window is” he curled his fingers into air quotes, _“frowned upon.”_

“But...Kilgrave would have gotten away if you hadn’t.”

“Yeah, and a security guard lost an eye, and another is in a coma after a car accident after Kilgrave told her to ‘go home’. Seems she took that as a cue to try walking to Queens.”

Bucky’s stomach twisted, even before Clint continued.

“Oh, and we beat up a bunch of Committee-appointed medical staff, so they’re not too happy about that either." He caught the look on Bucky’s face. “It’ll blow over once everyone calms down. Hill is really putting her neck out for me.”

“You mean for us.”

Clint gave him a long look, as though deciding something. “Yeah, ok. Us.”

“Don’t treat me like an idiot, Barton. Just tell me.”

“Just keep in mind that nine out of ten bureaucrats are hypocritical idiots.”

_ “Tell me.” _

Clint grimaced. “Fine, but you asked for it. So turns out the Winter Soldier running around the Compound and getting into fights with civilians, Iron Man, and the Director of New S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t on the Committee’s Christmas list.”

Bucky put his hand over his face, leaning back against the wall with a groan.

A shuffle and a squeak of springs told him that Clint had taken up residence at the end of the bed. “Not that a single one of those incidents was your fault, and no one that matters thinks it is.”

Bucky didn’t look up. He had known something like this would happen the second Natasha had arrived in Wakanda. Something like this _always_ happened when he was around, no matter how hard he tried to stay out of the way. 

“It wasn't your fault,” Clint insisted. “I’ve been over each second of that day with every person in this building that’s ever touched a briefcase, and I honestly can’t think of anything either of us could have done differently. No one died, Kilgrave’s in jail. So don’t blame -”

“I’m _not.”_ Bucky steadied himself, then managed to remove the hand from his face so he could meet Clint's eyes. “I _know_ it’s not my fault. Just like everything that happened under Hydra wasn’t my fault. But that doesn’t mean stuff like this doesn’t happen anyway. And sometimes …sometimes I just want to be blamed. Because in some ways that’s easier.”

Clint’s brow creased, but he bit back on his response and gave Bucky space to speak instead.

“Sometimes it’s easier to say it was my fault,” Bucky admitted. “That I did those things, that it was me - or at least, partly me. Because being at fault also means being in control.” Once he had started, he couldn’t stop. “And everyone keeps telling me everything I did wasn’t me at all, that it was Hydra, or that I did what I had to in Siberia, or with Kilgrave and…and sometimes that’s worse.”

He saw Clint’s hand outstretch, giving Bucky a moment to pull away if he wanted to. When he didn’t, Clint rested it on his knee. “I get it.”

“With…with Loki?”

Clint tensed at the name, but shook his head. “No. But…other things. And claiming fault because that's easier to accept than being helpless. I...yeah. I've been there.”

Bucky waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t, instead  glancing over to the pile of books. “I don’t like reading because I couldn’t until I was nineteen.”

Bucky blinked, taken aback. He didn’t know a whole lot about Clint’s past, but he’d picked up bits and pieces. It didn't take a lot to figure that the man’s childhood hadn't included a lot of time in school.

“I didn’t really need to,” Clint continued, a hint of defensiveness creeping into his tone. “And I could get by in four languages by the time I was ten and I could sign in another three before I was eighteen. Then S.H.I.E.L.D. picked me up. I got by for about four months before Coulson figured it out.”

The name rang a bell, and Bucky remembered it was the name Bruce had dropped in his lab. “Phil Coulson?”

Clint glanced at him surprised. “Natasha’s spoken about him? Or Steve?”

Bucky shook his head. “No, just…Bruce mentioned him. Once. Who is he?”

A wry smile crossed Clint’s face. “The man who saved my life.” He lifted the side of his shirt, and Bucky saw an old bullet wound then, the scarring distinct but neat. A clean shot.

“He saved you after you were shot?”

“I mean, he was the one who shot me,” Clint continued, tone remaining casual. “But in his defense, I was robbing a S.H.I.E.L.D. base at a time. Almost managed it too.” The mischievous look that always made Bucky’s heart skip crossed Clint’s face. “I was on my way out with a USB filled with S.H.I.E.L.D. intel and a cache of weapons. Didn’t even see Phil. _I_ didn’t see Phil.” He paused to let that sink in. “He wasn’t even hiding. He just had this knack for blending into the background. I was nearly at the getaway vehicle when…” Clint mimed a gunshot. “I thought he had missed which, yeah, would have meant a pretty messy death. Not that I’d really expected to go out any other way.”

He said the last sentence as nonchalantly as the rest of the story, and moved on before Bucky could comment.

“But he didn’t. He called in a med team, had me patched up. When I asked him why later, he said that he was curious about the homeless nineteen-year-old who had broken into one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s most secure bases with nothing but a bow and arrow. Said that sounded like someone he wanted on his side, if I was willing.”

“Were you?”

“Eventually.” Clint shifted on the bed. “S.H.I.E.L.D. was never great, but it was better than I what had. Phil was better than what I had.”

Bucky caught the past tense and coupled that with the fact of Clint never bringing the man up before. “What happened to him?"

“Loki.”

“I’m sorry.”

Clint shrugged it off. “He was there for me. He had no reason to be, but he was. And he taught me how to be there for Natasha, and later for Wanda. To give people who everyone else has written off a chance.” 

There was a beat of silence, which Bucky broke. “He had a reason."

Bucky almost missed the sadness that passed over Clint's face, he hid it so quickly. He knew what he was doing. Exposing personal information. Leaving an opening for Bucky to do the same, without forcing him to take it.

He took it. “You stole the scalpel.”

Bucky had it wedged down the side of his bed his first night in the Compound, the makeshift weapon swiped from the med bay. It was never meant to be used. He wasn’t even sure if he’d fight back if they decided to come for him. It just gave him peace of mind that he could.

Clint didn’t bother denying it. “Yep.”

Bucky bit back on the accusations of invasions of privacy, because if the situations were reversed, wouldn’t he have done the same? “I didn't use it on purpose.”

“Don’t give any more bullshit about a training accident.”

Bucky kept his voice level. “I’m not. But it wasn’t on purpose. Not…not really.” Clint’s hand was still on his knee; a warm, steadying weight that gave him the strength to continue. “I have dreams sometimes.”

Clint went very still, but didn’t pull away. 

“They’re usually…they’re bad, but they’re manageable. Then I had this one, after…” He hesitated. It had been after he’d seen Clint surrounded in the med bay, strapped down to a bed with a wedge between his teeth, with Tony Stark of all people by his side.

It had taken every ounce of self-control then not to rush forward and rip Clint from their grip. Only Stark’s statement that Bucky's presence would make things worse had caused him to back off. Instead, he had waited around the corner until he heard that Clint was going to be ok.

And gave that asshole doctor a decent scare on her way out for good measure.

Bucky swallowed, deciding to skip over those details. “I thought I was back there. With Hydra.”

Clint’s hand tightened on his knee.

“They were _putting_ things in me. Not just in my head, but everywhere. Metal and wires and...and _parts._ And then I woke up, and I didn’t know where I was, and the scalpel was beside the bed and I thought if I could just cut deep enough I’d get it all out. Everything they put inside me. By the time I realized it was a dream I’d…” He gestured to the covered injury. “And I didn’t want to tell anyone because I knew how it looked. That I didn’t have a grip on myself, or that I was getting worse and not better, and I didn’t know what that would mean. If they would lock me up or cart me off to psych or just…” He raised a gun to his head and mimed pulling the trigger. “So I hid it and just kind of hoped it would heal on its own.” 

A long silence followed his words as Bucky waited for Clint to speak, not sure what to expect. Maybe an administration for being stupid, or comforting words, or just acknowledgment and moving on.

The last thing he expected was for Clint to open his mouth and say, “I’m married.”

It took a full five seconds for Bucky to fully absorb what Clint had just said, half-sure he had misheard him. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I’m married,” Clint repeated. He took his hand off Bucky’s knee and scooted back up the bed so he was mirroring Bucky’s pose of leaning against the wall. “With three kids.”

Bucky blinked, trying to find his footing in this bizarre turn of conversation. “You’re not shitting me?”

“I am one hundred percent not shitting you." He reached into a back pocket and pulled out a lovingly folded photograph, pushing it into Bucky’s hand. “Here.”

Bucky stared down at the three faces gazing up at him; a boy, a girl, and a baby. The girl’s smile was a dead ringer for Clint’s. “You and Natasha have _kids?”_

It was Clint’s turn to be put on the back foot, breaking out in surprised laughter. “Me and Nat? No. Definitely not. I think we’d murder each other.”  


“Please. She’d murder you. You wouldn’t stand a chance.” Bucky slumped against the wall, still absorbing that information. “So who -”

“Her name’s Laura. She lives in a farmhouse with the kids in Missouri. I fly out to see them when I can, although the Accords have made that a lot harder.”

He shouldn’t be this disappointed. Clint wasn’t with Natasha, but he was still taken - even _more_ taken, in a way. Not that he would have made a move anyway. He'd just admitted to ripping a hole in his torso over a stupid night terror. He wasn’t exactly a catch.

“Very few people know about them,” Clint continued. “The team. Hill. And Fury, wherever the hell that sneaky bastard is.”

"Then why...why would you tell me that?"

“It’s my biggest secret,” Clint finished. “Their safety is most important thing in the world. And only shared with the people I would trust with my kids’ lives.”

Bucky suddenly felt sick. He pushed the photograph back at Clint. “Then you shouldn’t have told me.”

“Why? You going to stab me in the back, Barnes?”

“I might!” Bucky scrambled back on the bed putting as much distance between him and Clint as he could. “What if Shuri didn’t take out all the programming? Or someone finds a new way in? Or-”

“Then I’d shoot you.”

"I - what?"

“I’d exhaust all other options first, but if you were going to lead someone dangerous to where my kids live? They'd come first. They’ll always come first. And if the positions were reversed, that’s what I would want.” Clint was still watching him, waiting for a response, as though Bucky was going to flee or argue.

Instead, a relieved smile flooded his face. “Really?”

“Yep. No offense.”

“None taken.” _Quite the opposite, actually._ “And you’re telling me about them because…”

“I trust you,” Clint clarified. “And I hope that means you can trust me back with asking for help with you need it.” He nodded to the injury. “And not hiding stuff like that, at least from me.”

"I...I'll try." Then he amended. "I will. Trust you, I mean.”

"Ok then."

Bucky cast about for something else to say. “You and your wife…” The word sounded strange in his mouth. “That must be hard. Being away so much.”

“We knew what was signing up for.” Clint had materialized what looked like one of Natasha’s hair ties from nowhere, twisting it around his fingers. “We knew we would always have to keep it under wraps. Being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent is dangerous enough without giving your enemies more targets to go after. And Laura does consulting work that I’m _really_ not allowed to talk about, so that's always been a two-way street. Just made sense. We make it work.”

“I’m glad.” He couldn’t tell if that was a lie or not.

Clint wrapped the hair tie around his fingers, pulling until the skin turned white. “So, I know you’ve been busy. Getting caught up on modern times, and all that.”

“And all that." The words were hesitant, Bucky unsure where Clint was headed.

“And I know the forties were, you know, conservative and everything.”

Bucky let himself smirk at that one. “Not as conservative as people think. At least not in my experience.”

“No?”

“They trained up young men and sent them into a war zone where there were almost no women and plenty of adrenalin. What do you think happened?”

Clint pulled the hair tie tighter. “So you’ve…”

Bucky shrugged. “Sure. It really wasn’t that big a deal, unless your superior caught you, and you went home to your girl at the end of the day.”

“Right. So just a way to blow off adrenaline, homesickness, all that.”

“At the time. Girls made good wives and boys made good… _friends._ But Shuri told me it’s different now. That men can marry each now and everything. Which is good,” he added quickly, remembering Shuri’s lessons about the LGBTQIA+ community. “I think it’s good.”

“Ok.” Clint let the hair tie snap back, closing his fingers around it before it could ping off. “Well, that’s one question answered, at least.”

“And…what’s the other?”

Clint seemed to ready himself before he asked it. “Do you know what an open relationship is?”

“Um, no. Sorry.”

“It’s when you’re dedicated to someone, like a partner or a spouse, but it’s…open. To other people.”

“Oh.” Bucky shuffled himself on the bed, feeling color enter into his cheeks, not daring to hope that this was heading where it seemed to be. “So you’re married but you can still sleep with other people?”

That was…an option, he guessed, if that was what Clint was offering. Even though he still needed some time to build up to anyone touching him like that. And even though he had hoped for maybe something a little bit more, especially after he had talked out with Shuri that yes, a long-term relationship with a guy was just as plausible now as it was with a girl. The moment she had taught him the word bisexual a lot of things had fallen neatly into place.

But a fellow soldier, who he was definitely attracted to (he was done denying it to himself), and someone he trusted? There were worse choices to get him reacquainted with that side of his physical life.

“Some of them are like that,” Clint continued. Bucky had never heard the archer pick words so carefully. “But for me and Laura…like I said, we’re apart from each other a lot. This actually started as a practicality - sleeping with the odd colleague to disguise that either of us had a serious partner. But then, over time, we found it just worked for us. I love her, and she’ll always be my primary, no matter what. But we both recognize that we don’t have to be all things to each other. And if we find something we connect to in another person, we don't hold each other back. We let them have that experience.” He finally looked up, meeting Bucky’s eyes. “And if this was an experience you’d be interested in - physically, emotionally, whatever…then I’m down.”

Instincts split Bucky down the middle, torn between leaning forward and pressing his lips to Clint’s and bolting for the door. Instead, he took a breath, gathered himself, and counted to five, rather surprising himself that it worked. He guessed _some_ of the time he was spending in therapy was useful. “Are you…are you _sure?”_

“Why wouldn’t I be sure?”

Bucky shuffled himself on the bed, looking back down at his knees. “I just can’t see why you’d want…” He gestured around his head. “Or…” He gestured to his body. “It’s a lot.”

“So?” Clint waited until Bucky’s eyes were back on him before he repeated Bucky’s movements, but this time around himself. _“This_ isn’t exactly a picnic either. No one on this team is.” He paused to consider. “Actually, we all have pretty disastrous dating lives. So maybe that’s not the strongest argument. But also screw making arguments, I never found much use for them. I just follow my gut, because it’s usually right. And my gut says that this is right. If you want it to be.”

Bucky counted to five. And then five again. He’d hoped for this. He hadn’t gone as far as fully admitting it, but he _had._ But now it was here…

Clint found the words before he did. “This is too much.”

Bucky let out a long breath. “I…maybe. For right now, at least.”

Clint took it in stride, although Bucky didn’t miss the flash of disappointment before he plastered the carefree smile back on. “Well. It’s on the table. For now, or for later, or for never, if that’s what you want. And if it’s never, it’s fine,” he added quickly. “I’m satisfied with just knowing you have my back.”

Bucky nodded, allowing himself a small smile. “Same.”

After another beat, Clint pushed himself off the bed, stretching. “Also, someone should tell you that bed is awful. Oh wait, I just did. And we all know I’m really the brains behind this team.”

The smile spread a little. “If that’s the case, then we’re all doomed.”

Clint threw him an appraising look as he headed for the door. “One of these days I’m going to make you laugh, Barnes. I bet it’s all high-pitched and adorable.”

“You wish.”

“Or are you a snorter? I _bet_ you’re a snorter.” He rested his hand on the doorknob. “Door open or closed?”

Bucky considered, running a hand absently over the bandages, feeling the deep wound that was healing underneath. “Let's leave it open.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter, Bucky and Steve finally discuss what happened in [What Makes A Captain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26439220/chapters/64415188)... (and a little bit more Clint/Bucky)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, the final chapter!
> 
> A big big thank you to everyone who has supported this fic/series so far. And I mean that - your support means everything, but especially in this series, by giving me the space to take risks. Like the risk I took for this chapter. And for having the patience and trusting me to pay those risks off as the series goes forward.
> 
> Ok. Here we go. 
> 
> TW: Some discussion of suicidal tendencies

Bucky spent fifteen minutes making tea, twenty-three minutes trying to read, and forty-four and half minutes staring at the ceiling telling himself that this was a conversation that _needed_ to be had, before he finally got up the courage to call him. Or, more specifically, got F.R.I.D.A.Y. to ask if he was free and if he wanted to talk.

It took him less than ten minutes to get there.

Bucky spent those minutes anxiously pacing the living area of his quarters, tossing the odd book onto the stack on the dining table, straightening chairs, wiping down benches, and wondering what the hell he was trying to prove. That he was coping? That he didn’t need help? That he had whatever passed for his life these days together?

He had closed the door to the bedroom. That felt too intimate, somehow. Too close quarters. He’d much rather have this talk in the more expansive living area, where the kitchen, lounge, and dining room flowed into one.

The knock at the door was tentative and polite, as though the person on the other side was worried Bucky was going to send them away again. Given their history these past months, Bucky didn’t blame him.

“You can come in. It’s unlocked.”

The door handle turned, and Bucky braced himself as Steve entered. He wasn’t out of breath - the serum wouldn’t have allowed for that over such a short time - but his hair wasn’t as neatly combed as usual, one shoelace tied more sloppily than the other. As though he had raced here the second he’d gotten Bucky’s invitation.

Bucky tried to mask the immense wave of guilt behind a smile. He hadn’t invited Steve here once since he’d moved in. It had always been Steve visiting (or trying to visit), attempting to check up on his best friend without pushing too hard. And then eventually getting the message, and hardly pushing at all.

Steve shut the door behind him with a gentle click. “Hey. Everything ok?”

Bucky forced down the spark of irritation ignited by the greeting. “I’m fine.”

Steve hovered by the door, eyes roaming over the room and finding the stack of books on the table. “You’re reading.”

“Some.”

“Anything good?”

Bucky shrugged. “Bruce lent me some stuff.”

“Bruce?” Steve quickly hid his surprise. “That’s good.”

“He’s coming up with some antibiotics and pain medication that work with Hydra’s serum,” Bucky answered quickly. _It’s not that I’m hanging out with friends other than you._ “The stuff they made for you mostly works for me, but he figured better safe than sorry.” _Even though it is that._

“That’s good,” Steve repeated.

They both hung awkwardly in their respective quarters of the room, and Bucky wondered how on earth their relationship had come to this. This was the boy he’d spend hours huddled up with over comics in the corner of Steve’s draughty bedroom, often shoulder to shoulder with a blanket around them to stay warm. This was the man he’d shared a box-like apartment with before the war, sharing a bed through the winter out of practicality and to stop Steve’s tiny frame from shaking apart on the nights they had chosen a hot dinner over firewood. This was the soldier he’d followed into war - Steve Rogers, not Captain America - from trenches to no man’s land and to that last mission into enemy territory.

This was the friend he had laughed and cried and fought side by side with, and now he couldn’t think of anything to say except, “Do you want a drink?”

“Um,” Steve shuffled his feet a little, as though not sure what to do with them. “I can’t really but…Are you having one?”

God, Bucky _wished._ Although, given what his brain and body had gone through the past seventy years, his inability to get drunk was probably for the best. He still missed it though. “I meant water, or tea, or-”

“Oh. Then water’s fine.”

Bucky pulled two glasses down from their shelf before realizing even that felt like a trap. He’d just been using the tap, unwilling to touch Stark’s fancy water dispenser in the fridge door. It knew Stark wouldn’t care or even notice, but the thing looked expensive and just the idea of having any more of Stark’s money sent his way…just, no. But if he used the tap, would he have to explain why he wasn’t using the fridge? Which would bring up Stark, which would -

“Buck?”

Bucky realized he’d been staring at the fridge for a good five seconds. He hastily made a choice, filling the glasses in the kitchen sink. “Sit anywhere. If you want.”

He turned to see Steve’s eyes dart from the dining table to the couches placed around the huge TV which Bucky also refused to use for the same reason as the fridge. Steve chose the couch, Bucky noted with relief. The dining table would have felt too formal, and this was going to be difficult enough already.

“Here.” He handed Steve the glass of water before perching on the couch opposite him, judging how close he could sit without it feeling like he was keeping his distance. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

Bucky had heard that one before. When he’d tried to pin Steve down about a nasty cough, or a gushing wound on the battlefield, or the third black eye that month because Steve had refused to let Bucky walk him home from school. Because Steve could never keep his head out of a fight, no matter what the odds were.

“Really?” Bucky put his water down without tasting it, leaning back against the couch. “Because I’ve heard mind control can really do a number on you.”

Steve had the decency to flush. “I am fine,” he insisted. “Compared to everyone else, I got off easy.”

“Steve, a psychopath made a close friend put a gun to your head and vice versa. That’s not my definition of getting off easy.”

Steve swerved the conversation instead of answering. “What about you?” The polite tone didn’t mask the slight challenge there. “Are you ok?”

Bucky didn’t rise to the bait. “The doctors have said there will be no lasting effects from the blood loss and I’m still seeing the shrink three times a week to talk about it.”

“That’s good. I’m glad to hear that.” Steve’s tone didn’t match his expression, as hard as he was trying to school it.

“Are _you_ talking to someone about it?”

That took him aback. “Not really…I thought…” _I thought that was what you called me in here for._

Bucky winced inwardly as he heard the unsaid words, and tried to course-correct. “We can talk about it.”

“No, it’s fine,” Steve said, and Bucky was really beginning to hate that word. “What did you actually want to talk about?”

For a split second, Bucky considered lying. There was a time when Steve would have been able to catch him out on it, but even though the programming and the arm had been long-since removed, there were aspects of the Winter Soldier that were always going to be with him. A textbook poker face, for one.

Then Bucky recalled a gun under Steve’s chin, sitting next to his hospital bed as nurses treated the extensive burns, the files he had been shown again and again and again about a plane crashing into ice. He’d put this talk off long enough. “Um, so…Clint asked me out.”

“Oh.” Whatever Steve had been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that. Some of the tension went out of his friend’s shoulders. “Really?

It was Bucky’s turn to color a little. “I mean, I think so? He explained about his wife, and everything.” A new thought occurred to him. “Which, wait - you know about all that right? About -”

“I know about Laura and the kids,” Steve confirmed. “And her arrangement with Clint. The whole team does.” He considered that for a moment. “Actually, I don’t think Peter does. But everyone else, yeah.”

“And you’re ok with it?”

“Sure.” Steve shrugged. “It’s not something I’d want, but if it suits them, and if it suits you, then I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

“And you wouldn’t be opposed me dating a -”

“You like who you like, Buck. I’m always going to support you, whether you’re with a man or woman.”

“Um, thanks, but I was going to ask if you’d be opposed to me dating a teammate.”

There was an awkward pause. “Right.”

“But good to know. And thank you for saying it.”

Steve’s lips twisted up in the beginnings of a wry smile. “Did you invite me down here to ask for my _blessing?_ Because Clint is never going to let you hear the end of it if you did.”

“What? No!” Bucky threw one of the couch cushions at him, which Steve easily caught. “I just wanted to ask if there were any, I don’t know, in-team dating rules.”

“You aren’t breaking any bylaws,” Steve assured him.

“Ha,” Bucky smirked. _“Bi_ -laws.”

Steve snorted as he threw the cushion back. “As long as it doesn’t affect missions when you’re in the field together, it’s fine. Which, judging by the whole Kilgrave situation, won’t be an issue. You two make a good team. I’m happy for you.”

The last sentence sounded so sincere that, for the second time, Bucky was tempted to back out of where he was subtly driving this conversation. They could sprawl on these couches and talk pretty girls and boys and pretend that nothing had changed since 1941. “We could double date,” Bucky suggested. “I haven’t forgotten that cute blonde you were smooching next to that ridiculous car you ‘borrowed’.”

“That car was inconspicuous for the setting and suited our cover.” His expression turned more serious. “And Sharon and I…”

Ah. Bucky knew _that_ expression. “Didn’t work out?”

“Not exactly.” Steve leaned forward, absently drawing patterns in the condensation on the water glass. “I’ve just been…busy.”

_Come on. Talk to him. You don’t know how many more chances you’re going to get._

Bucky shifted forward on the couch. “Steve. You’re Captain-freakin’-America, in a time and place that sees fit to rain aliens and produce narcissists with mind control that break into your home. You’re always going to be busy.”

“I know.” Steve was looking resolutely at the table. “But the Accords are still being finalized, and we haven’t figured out who started the fire at the Tower or why that guy attacked Tony at Peter’s award ceremony and…” He trailed off, not looking at Bucky.

Bucky finished the thought for him. “And there’s me.”

The condensation on the glass was long gone, but Steve kept rubbing his thumb along the edge anyway. “I’ll always be here for you. Whatever you need. Even if…even if you need me to give you space, or time I…I can do that. For as long as you need. You know that, right?”

_Don’t wuss out. You’re never going to get a better opportunity. You might not get another opportunity, period._

“Here’s the thing.” Bucky took a long breath, twisting his fingers in his shirt. “I _don’t_ know that.”

Steve went rigid, the glass finally forgotten as he sat bolt upright, blue eyes huge. “I know I haven’t been around much,” he said immediately. “I thought that’s what you wanted, and I knew you had Clint…well, not like that, but that you were spending a lot of time together -”

“Steve, slow down.”

“But if you want me to be around more, I can be,” Steve insisted. “If you need to talk ortrain or just hang out I can -”

_“Steve.”_

“Whatever you need, Buck. I am here for you. ’Til the end of the line.”

At some point Steve had edged along the couch until their knees were almost touching, looking so earnest that Bucky had to drop his gaze, only to find that wasn’t enough and pushing himself to his feet instead. “That catchphrase isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to every problem.”

He made his way back into the kitchen, covering the movement by pouring himself a second glass of water. When he had turned back, Steve was also standing, although hovering behind the couch, looking completely lost. “It’s worked so far.”

“No, it _hasn’t.”_ Bucky realized he was gripping the glass and hastily shoved it aside, not wanting a broken glass incident. He wasn’t going to cause damage unless it was necessary. “It didn’t work. Not with Kilgrave.”

Steve went very still. “What are you talking about?”

“When he had you. When he was taking you off to god-knows-where and I was _useless_ -”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“- I was thinking it. Over and over again, because that’s our thing, right? And it didn’t work. Kilgrave could have given the kill order right then and there and I wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing to stop him.”

Steve was shaking his head. “It’s different. Hydra, Kilgrave - one was science, like a brain rewiring, right? Kilgrave’s was…” He huffed a laugh. “I know I shouldn’t still have trouble saying _magic_ after all we’ve seen, but -” 

Bucky cut him off. “That’s not the point I’m trying to make.”

“Then what is?” Steve shoved a hand through his uncombed hair. “Just…tell me what you need, ok? Because I don’t…I don’t know what to _do.”_

Bucky leaned over the kitchen bench, putting two layers of furniture between them, pushing past the helplessness in Steve’s words. “I’ve tried. You haven’t listened.”

Steve blinked at him. “We’ve barely spoken in months. When haven’t I -”

“In Siberia.”

The room dropped several degrees. They hadn’t talked about it - any of it - since they had said a brief goodbye outside the base before Bucky boarded T’Challa’s plane.

Cautiously, Steve made his way out in front of the couch so he could lean against it,bringing them a little closer, knuckles white as he gripped the material. “You didn’t invite me down here to talk about Clint, did you?”

Slowly, Bucky shook his head.

“Ok. So what did you want to talk about?”

“You asked me what I need.”

“Yes.”

“Ok. Right now, I need you to listen. Really listen, ok?”

“Ok.”

“Steve.”

“I’m listening.”

_Ok. Here goes._ “We were talking. Me and Clint, I mean. And when he told me about his family he said…he said if he was forced to choose between me and them, he’d choose them. Even if it meant something happening to me. And that didn’t stop him wanting to be my….wanting to get close to me. And it didn’t mean he cared about me any less. And if he had to make that choice, I’d want him to choose them.”

“I got you both out.” Steve’s voice was hoarse, and he cleared his throat before continuing. “I was never going to choose. I was _always_ going to save you both, Buck, I promise.”

“But you didn’t save yourself!”

The words came out louder than he had intended them to, and he forced his temper back down as Steve gripped the couch hard enough to rip the material. Great. So much not wasting Stark’s money.

“That doesn’t matter,” Steve pressed. “Zemo forced me to choose and I chose. And that’s not a choice I would take back if you gave me the same situation.”

“I know.” The words came out through clenched teeth.

“Because you are worth it, you know that right?” Steve made an aborted movement, as though he had been about to move closer then thought better of it. “I know at the time you said you weren’t but…but even if it might not seem like it now, I promise-”

“That’s not it,” Bucky cut him off.

“Then -” Steve’s frown deepened. “We’re here, aren’t we? All of us.”

“You didn’t know that would be the case when you put that gun under your chin.”

Steve met him head-on. “And what would you have done? If the positions were switched if you had to choose between me and…” He cast about. “Ok, let’s say you had to choose between me and Becca. Would you have shot me?”

“Probably not,” Bucky admitted. “I probably would have tried the exact same thing you did.”

“Then why the hell are you getting mad at me for -”

_“Because I don’t want to die, Steve.”_

The silence that followed was echoing, broken only by the gentle drip of the tap Bucky hadn’t fully turned off. Steve was staring at him, shocked. “I don’t want to die either. Do you think that I…I _don’t.”_

“Are you sure about that? Because only a couple of weeks ago you ran into a burning building knowing you weren’t going to make it out.”

Steve tensed. “Natasha was in there. If I had stood back and done nothing she would have died.”

“Right, because Stark and Rhodes were able to track you to get to her. Information you did _not_ have going in.”

“She’s my teammate and my friend. I had to try. That doesn’t make me _suicidal.”_

Bucky didn’t back down. “You did everything you could to fight in a war you must have known you wouldn’t have survived pre-serum.”

“Everyone else was doing their part for their country. I had to do mine.”

“And then, after a fluke got you into basic training, you signed yourself up to be a lab rat for a procedure you didn’t know you would survive - ”

“I _did_ survive.”

“- and then you abandoned your post and your commander to fling yourself into enemy territory -”

“Because they had our people! Because they had _you!”_

“- and then you flew a plane into an ocean of ice and didn’t come back out again for seventy years!”

He stopped, breathing hard, only realizing after he was done that his hand had dented the kitchen countertop, he had been gripping it so hard. He released it like it was burning metal, cursing. So much for avoiding damage. “Damnit.”

Steve spoke like he was choosing his next words carefully. _“I’m not suicidal._ Buck, whatever you think, I’m not -”

“Going to kill yourself? No, you’d hate to make a mess someone else would have to clean up.”

“That not funny.”

“It wasn’t meant to be a joke. You are aware that sacrificing yourself _is_ killing yourself, right?”

“And what was I meant to do instead? Let that bomb kill all those people? If it’s a choice between my life or thousands of others, or even _one_ other, then it’s my duty to lay down my life for them. It’s what I signed on for when I picked up the shield, and I don’t regret it.”

Bucky realized he was gripping the countertop top again. Was the dent there deeper than before? “And there was _no_ other option, huh?”

_“What?”_

“On the plane. Flying it into the ice. There were no other options - are you sure about that?”

“Of course I’m -”

“I read through those reports, you know. Of that day. My handlers loved showing them to me, proving to me that you were dead, that this time no Captain America was coming to the rescue.” He heard Steve’s breath hitch, but pushed on. “The bomb wasn’t on a timer. You had control of the plane. Dammit, Steve, you didn’t even send Peggy your GPS signal before you went down so she could come get your body. And she and Howard would have thawed you out a lot sooner than S.H.I.E.L.D. did.”

It was several moments before Steve found the words to answer. “I was a trained soldier,” he said, his voice low. “You don’t think I considered all that? I knew the odds. I made the choice I had to.”

“Did you?” Bucky challenged him. “Or did your mind go straight to where it always does, which is that the only way you can really prove yourself is to lay down your life in some glorious way?”

“I didn’t do any of this,” Steve gestured down at himself “To _prove_ something. I did it because it was the right thing to do.” He took a breath. “I didn’t - I _don’t_ want to die. But I want others to die less. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“No,” Bucky agreed. “But there is something wrong with that course of action being the _first_ place your mind goes, and not the _last.”_ He ran over his hand over his forehead, debating whether to step around the kitchen counter and remove the last barrier between them, before thinking better of it. “You asked me what I needed.”

“Yes,” Steve answered quickly.

“Ok.” Bucky inhaled. Counted to five. Exhaled. “I need _you.”_

“You _have_ me,” Steve insisted.

“But for how long?” In. Five. Out. “It’s not that I don’t want you around, Stevie, or that I’ve replaced you, or found someone better. There isn’t anyone better. I like Clint and Nat and Bruce, I do, but they’re never going to be what you are to me. And I want you there to help me through this, and to see me get better. And then, once I am, if there is the tiniest hope of a life where I’m not having some government breathing down my neck waiting to see if I’m a threat or an asset, that’s a future I want you in.”

“I…I want that too. If you do.”

“But I’m also…” In. Five. Out. “I’m also terrified that the moment I dare to lean on you, you’re going to be _gone,_ and you’re not even going to think twice about leaving. You’ll see a righteous cause and you’ll throw yourself to it and then you’ll _leave me_. And that can make it really fucking scary to be your friend.”

Bucky noticed the still empty water glass. He used it as an excuse to turn away, to put his back to Steve in order to fill and drink it in three swallows. He hadn’t realized how dry his throat had gotten. He gestured with the glass. “Do you want any?”

“What?”

“Water.” Bucky schooled his features before he turned back around. “Do you want any?”

Steve blinked, taking a moment to register the words. His eyes were suspiciously shiny. “No, I’m good. Thank you.”

“And it’s not just that,” Bucky continued. He hadn’t shut the tap off properly again. He could hear it dripping, repetitive and far, far louder than it should have been.

“Is that why…” Steve swallowed, his voice thick. “These past few months, I’ve barely seen you…this is the reason?”

“Partly.” _Drip. Drip. Drip._ Bucky slammed his hand behind him, cutting the noise off. “It’s not just being scared of asking for your help only to lose it. It’s knowing that if I ask for your help, you’ll give _all_ of it. You’ll prioritize me over everything else because you think that’s the right thing to do, and that’s not what I want.”

“That’s not fair.” Steve blinked a few more times, glancing away as though to hide the action. “Back in Brooklyn, before the war - you busted your ass at that factory because I was always needing some kind of medicine or warmer clothes or extra food. You always had my back in a fight, even when I told you to stay out of it, even when I _started_ it. And I hated that you had to do that, but you never stopped. How is me wanting to help you now, to put you first now, any different?”  
  
“Because I had a _life.”_ Bucky squeezed his eyes shut, forcing off an incoming headache. It was happening less frequently now, but recalling memories before Hydra could sometimes still blindside him like a jackhammer to the skull. “I took out girls, and I had Ma and Becca, the lads from work. You were my first priority, always, but you weren’t my _only_ priority. I looked after you because you’re a punk and my friend, not because it was how I found worth in myself.”

_“Worth?”_ Steve pushed himself off the couch. “You think I want to be there for you because, what, it makes me feel _good about myself?”_

Bucky winced. “No. God, no, that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“That I’m _scared_ , Steve. I’m scared if I let you close you’ll either throw away everything good in your life for me, or that you’ll do something you see as heroic and I’ll lose you for good. And I know you just got me back but…I just got you back too.”

Another long beat of silence.

“So,” Steve said finally. “Where do we go from here?”

“You really want this to work?”

“Yes,” Steve answered quickly. 

“Ok. Then I need at least some assurance.”

Steve’s next words were all caution. “What kind of assurance?”

“That if I let you in, you don’t go _all_ in. You save something for yourself. You still spend time with your friends, you take that girl on a date, and you _don’t_ fuck up the Accords and get yourself arrested, even if they go back on their word and turn against my favor. I’m not saying you should follow something you don’t believe in,” Bucky added quickly when he saw Steve about to protest. “I’m saying that if things turn against me which, Steve, they _might_ \- you cover your stubborn ass, ok?”

“I don’t -”

“And,” he pressed. “I need to know that you’re not going to throw yourself headfirst into the next fire - literal or figurative. I’m not asking you not to fight - I would _never_ ask that of you, or expect it.”

“Then…then what are you asking?”

“I’m asking….No, I _need_ to hear you say this. That if it came down to your life or someone else’s - to your life or _mine -_ you would at least consider yours. That if we were to replay Siberia, you could actually listen to what I _said I wanted_ and take the shot.”

A wave of total exhaustion followed the words. Tired. He was so goddamn _tired._

“You asked me what I needed,” Bucky finished. _“That’s_ what I need, Steve.”

Steve closed his eyes, pushing his hair back in the gesture Bucky had long-since memorized. Bucky tensed, waiting for his answer. The seconds ticked on, the tension between them mounting. Then - 

“I don’t think I can promise that, Buck.”

The words echoed in Bucky’s head long after Steve had left the room.

***

Bucky didn’t sleep that night. 

Even though the conversation wasn’t going to change much on the surface - he had barely seen Steve anyway - he still felt the loss. It still hurt. But not as much as dragging Steve away from some kind of life would. And maybe…maybe Bucky keeping his distance was better. For both of them.

The decision was a lot easier to make now he knew he wouldn’t be alone after making it.

He’d meant what he said. He wasn’t replacing Steve - he couldn’t even if he tried. That kind of bond was once in a lifetime, and not one everyone was lucky enough to get. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t take up other offers.

When dawn finally came, Bucky made the call.

He was half-surprised when Clint answered on the first ring. “Didn’t expect you to be up, Barton.”

_“Then why’d you call?”_

“So I could piss you off by waking you.”

_“I should probably warn you now, that’s a dangerous game.”_ The amount of background noise made it hard to tell if Clint was joking or not. _“You alright?”_

Bucky considered the question as he moved to the window, opening the blinds and gazing out the Compound grounds. Screw gardens and benches and trees. Bucky would take open space any day. “Yeah,” he decided. “I’m ok.”

_“Not to be indelicate, but you didn’t pick the best time for a social call.”_

“Where are you?”

_“Classified.”_

“Boring.”

_“I like to think it adds a certain mystique.”_ Bucky waited for Clint to hang up. He didn’t. _“So?”_

_“_ I can call back.”

_“No, now I’m curious. But if I hang up on you halfway don’t get your boxers in a twist, it’s the reception. Probably.”_

“Deal.” Bucky bit his lip, watching a gardener trundle across the lawn. “I was just thinking about what you said. About…experiences.”

_“Yeah?”_ The word cut out halfway, but Bucky heard the hope anyway. “ _You were thinking, huh?”_

“Yeah.” Bucky cracked a window to inhale the scents of freshly cut grass, watching the rising sun stain the lawns amber. “I know I said it was too much right now. But…”

_“But?”_

Bucky glanced back at Steve’s abandoned water glass, still perched on the dining room table. “But life is short, and you have my back. So fuck it, I’m in. I want to have that experience. With you.”

The moment he said the words, he knew they were right. This was right. A step in a brighter direction.

There was a particularly loud burst of static from Clint’s end that made Bucky wince, followed by what sounded like running footsteps.

“Please don’t tell me I just did the big declaration thing and you didn’t even hear -”

_“Corner of Rose Street and Hampton Boulevard,”_ Clint gasped into the phone.

“Clint, what -”

_“Three, two male, one female, features obscured, armed.”_

“Clint -”

_“Weapons appear to be -”_

The line went dead.

“Clint?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, remember when I said I'm grateful for the opportunity to take risks and that I'm going to pay those risks off? 
> 
> This ISN'T the end of Steve & Bucky's friendship in this series, not by a long shot. But this is where it needs to go right now for where I want the characters to end up so...yeah.
> 
> This also isn't meant to be Steve bashing - there's a difference between bashing a character and taking the time to pick apart and explore their flaws. And Steve has always been one of my favorites because he has such an interesting flaw - extreme selflessness. It's not a character flaw that gets depicted very often - in fact it's nearly always the opposite (see Tony, Thor, Dr Strange, pretty much all of the Guardians). And I'm not saying Bucky's totally right in this scenario either. As I've said before, I'm not interested in who is right - but why characters think they're right. 
> 
> Anyway. The Whumptoberverse will continue in [Budapest](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28404240/chapters/69599175)

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream at me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/jinxquickfoot), especially if you also write fanfic or do fanart! Share your work with me!
> 
> I had this idea after my co-host and did prep for our upcoming Jessica Jones episode on Kill the Cat and we realised just how freaking terrifying Killgrave is as a villain. If you want to listen to that episode when it comes out, visit [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ypaen3yM5Q&t=1s&ab_channel=KilltheCatPodcast) or [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/5hCprc9UCBZP4srFrBXKT1?si=VeMJEMn8SXOm2FiRCNkN0g) or wherever you get your podcasts and do that thing with the subscribe button.


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